e by Briton Riviere, called "Circe." Have you ever gone to see the pigs fed? Accompany me and you shall witness a scene of the most intense and absorbing gluttony which is not to be surpassed in its kind amid all the wonders of creation. As we approach the sty bearing a heavy bucket of bran and meal stirred up into a thick creamy mixture, we hear inside pushing, struggling, squealing, grunting, shrieks of excited greedy anticipation mixed with squeals of disappointment, as some porker gets shoved away by an old sow from a place near the trough which is to receive the cause of all this babel of sounds. Now we pour out the luscious nutriment. Wonderful result! In a moment the din stops. Not a sound is heard but of a furious supping, interrupted by an occasional subdued and comfortable grunt of utter enjoyment and satisfaction. If we now study the picture we shall see that the pigs are painted as at the moment they expect to be fed. See them crowding up, pushing each other over, uplifting their ugly heads, stretching their throats, which in the absence of a neck delude you into the popular error that pigs "cut their throats when they swim," look at their flexible coarsely-shaped snouts, their huge wrinkled brawny faces with small greedy eyes, and ask yourselves whether the artist has not studied nature to good purpose, in depicting the scene of animal selfishness which I have just described.
Let us now turn from this delineation of true beast life, to contemplate the fair form of the woman who sits and surveys it. What a contrast! What grace, refinement, and beauty are here! Observe the long fall of hair, gathered above the neck in a single circlet of gold, the graceful curve of the seated figure, her hands clasping her knees, and her head tilted backwards with strange but well-marked expression of countenance, and the exquisite poise and balance of the posture. At first sight the juxtaposition of so much loveliness and so much deformity is almost painful. An artist may well paint fair ladies on an errand of mercy in some foul den in a great city, but in such a design as this, we seem at first to be reminded of the inhuman satire of Swift.
To understand the picture we must go back to the beginnings* of history, for the conception of it is no new fancy struck out by some imaginative mind of the present day, but is based on a story between two and three thousand years old at least, a story so fascinating that men have gone on repeating it from generation to generation. Let us read this story as we know it first in the works of the oldest and greatest of European poets, Homer.
* Note: Professor Sayce's "Circe" should be studied after and not before a perusal of the poetry connected with her name. Every one will then want to know the origin of the Round Goddess of Moon Island.
In the tenth book of Homer's Odyssey, Ulysses and his comrades, on their way back from the Trojan war to Ithaca, land on an unknown island. A party is sent to explore it, and they reach a palace situated in a shady dale, inside of which they hear the voice of a woman plying her loom and singing as she weaves. The rest of the story is thus translated by Pope --
What voice celestial, chanting to the loom
The tale goes on to show how the crafty Ulysses, by the aid of a mystic herb called moly, overcame Circe's magic, rescued his companions, and reconverted them from swine into men. Turning once more to the picture we can see how faithfully the artist has rendered pictorially the charming story of the Odyssey. There is the beautiful enchantress surveying her victims with corn, while they look up to her with rapture and feed on the pigs' food in which they gloat. There is, however, something further conveyed to us in this picture, which I must now endeavor to bring out. Homer's tale, you will observe, contains no moral. It is like a fairy story told to a child, a tale of wonder unburthened (sic) with any serious thoughts. We pity from our hearts with poor wanderers in the midst of their undeserved troubles, and we rejoice with genuine sympathy when they are de