Compare Leopold von Buch on the Peak of Teneriffe in his Physikalische Beschreibung der canarischen Inseln, 1825, S. 213; and in the Abhandlungen der königl. Akademie zu Berlin, 1820-1821, S. 99.
[40] p. 289—“Waters of springs rising from different depths.”
Compare Arago in the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes pour 1835, p. 234. The increase of temperature is in our latitudes 1° of Reaumur (2°.25 of a degree of Fahrenheit) for every 113 Parisian feet (120.5 English feet), or 1° Fah. to 53.5 English feet nearly. In the Artesian boring at New Salzwerk (Oeynhausen’s Bad), not far from Minden, which is the greatest known depth below the level of the sea, the temperature of the water at 2094½ Parisian feet (2232¼ Eng.) is fully 26°.2 Reaumur, or 91° Fahr.; while the mean temperature of the air above may be taken at 7°.7 Reaumur, or 49°.2 Fahr. It is very remarkable that in the third century Saint Patricius, Bishop of Pertusa, was led by seeing the hot springs near Carthage to a very just view respecting the cause of such an increase of heat. (Acta S. Patricii, p. 555, ed. Ruinart; Kosmos, Bd. i. S. 231,—English Edition, Vol. i. p. 211.)
THE
VITAL FORCE;
OR,
THE RHODIAN GENIUS.
[FIRST PRINTED IN 1795.]
The Syracusans, like the Athenians, had their Pœcile, in which representations of gods and heroes, the works of Grecian and Italian art, adorned the halls, glowing with varied colours. The people resorted thither continually; the young warriors to contemplate the exploits of their ancestors, the artists to study the works of the great masters. Among the numerous paintings which the active zeal of the Syracusans had collected from the mother country, there was one which, for a century past, had particularly attracted the attention of spectators. Sometimes the Olympian Jove, Cecrops the founder of cities, and the heroic courage of Harmodius and Aristogiton, would want admirers, while men pressed in crowded ranks around the picture of which we speak. Whence this preference? Was it a rescued work of Apelles, or of the school of Callimachus? No; it possessed indeed grace and beauty; but yet neither in the blending of the colours, nor in the character and style of the entire picture, could it be compared with many other paintings in the Pœcile.
The multitude (comprehending therein many classes of society), often regard with astonishment and admiration what they do not comprehend: this picture had occupied its place for a hundred years; but though Syracuse contained within the narrow limits enclosed by its walls more of the genius of art than the whole of the remainder of sea-surrounded Sicily, no one had yet divined the hidden meaning of the design. It was even uncertain to what temple the painting had originally belonged, for it had been rescued from a shipwrecked vessel, which was only conjectured from the merchandise it contained to have come from Rhodes.
On the foreground of the picture youths and maidens formed a closely crowded group. They were without clothing and well formed, but at the same time did not exhibit the more noble and graceful proportions admired in the statues of Praxiteles and Alcamenes. Their robust limbs, shewing the traces of laborious efforts, and the purely terrestrial expression of their desires and sorrows, seemed to take from them every thing of a diviner character, and to chain them exclusively to their earthly habitation. Their hair was simply ornamented with leaves and field-flowers. Their arms were outstretched towards each other, as if to indicate their desire of union, but their troubled looks were turned towards a Genius who, surrounded by bright light, hovered in the midst. A butterfly was placed on his shoulder, and in his hand he held on high a lighted torch. The contours of his form were soft and child-like, but his glance was animated by celestial fire: he looked down as a master upon the youths and maidens at his feet. Nothing else that was characteristic could be discovered in the picture. Some persons thought they could make out at its foot the letters ζ and ς, from whence (as antiquaries were then no less bold in their conjectures than they now are), they took occasion to infer, in a somewhat forced manner, the name of Zenodorus; thus attributing the work to a painter of the same name as the artist who at a later period cast the Colossus of Rhodes.
The “Rhodian Genius,” however,—for such was the name given to the picture,—did not want for commentators and interpreters in Syracuse. Amateurs of the arts, and especially the younger amongst them, on returning from a short visit to Corinth or Athens, would have thought it equivalent to renouncing all pretensions to connoisseurship if they had not been provided with some new explanation. Some regarded the Genius as the personification of Spiritual Love, forbidding the enjoyment of sensual pleasures; others said it was the assertion of the empire of Reason over Desire: the wiser among the critics were silent, and presuming some high though yet undiscovered meaning, examined meanwhile with pleasure the simple composition of the picture.
Still, however, the question remained unsolved. The picture had been copied with various additions and sent to Greece, but not the least light had been thrown on its origin; when at length, at the season of the early rising of the Pleiades, and soon after the reopening of the navigation of the Egean Sea, ships from Rhodes entered the port of Syracuse, bearing a precious collection of statues, altars, candelabras, and paintings, which Dionysius’s love of art had caused to be brought together from different parts of Greece. Among the paintings was one which was immediately recognised as the companion or pendent of the Rhodian Genius: the dimensions were the same, and the colouring similar, but in a better state of preservation: the Genius was still the central figure, but the butterfly was no longer on his shoulder; his head was drooping, and his torch extinguished and inverted. The youths and maidens pressing around him had met and embraced; their glance, no longer subdued or sad, announced, on the contrary, emancipation from restraint, and the fulfilment of long-cherished desires.