But, on their part, the Pompeians were not a whit put out when they came to repaint their whole city afresh.  Would you like to get an accurate idea of their real merit and their indisputable value?  If so, ask some one to conduct you through the houses that have been lately exhumed, and look at the paintings still left in their places as they appear with all the brilliance that Vesuvius has preserved in them, and which the sunlight will soon impair.  In the saloon of the house of Proculus notice two pieces that correspond, namely, Narcissus and the Triumph of Bacchus—­powerless languor and victorious activity.  The intended meaning is clearly apparent, and is simply and vividly rendered.  The ancients never required commentators to make them understood.  You comprehend their idea and their subject at first glance.  The most ignorant of men and the least versed in Pagan lore, take their meaning with half a look and give their works a title.  In them we find no beating about the bush, no circumlocution, no hidden meanings, no confusion; the painter expresses what he means, does it quickly and does it well, without exaggerating his terms or overloading the scene.  His principal personages stand out boldly, yet the accessories do not cry aloud, “Look at me!” The picture of Narcissus represents Narcissus first and foremost; then it brings in a solitude and a streamlet.  The coloring has a brilliance and harmoniousness of tint that surprises us, but there are no useless effects in it.  In nearly all these frescoes (excepting the wedding of Zephyrus and Flora) the light spreads over it, white and equable (no one says cold and monotonous), for its office is not merely to illuminate the picture, but to throw sufficient glow and warmth upon the wall.  The low and narrow rooms having, instead of windows, only a door opening on the court, had need of this painted daylight which skilful pencils wrought for them.  And what movement there was in all those figures, what suppleness and what truth to nature![H]

[Illustration:  Exedra of the House of Siricus (See p. 195).]

Nothing is distorted, nothing attitudinizes.  Ariadne is really asleep, and Hercules, in wine, really sinks to the ground; the dancing girl floats in the air as though in her native element; the centaur gallops without an effort; it is simple reality—­the very reverse of realism—­nature such as she actually is when she is pleasant to behold, in the full effusion of her grace, advancing like a queen because she is a queen, and because she could not move in any other fashion.  In a word, these second-rate painters, poor daubers of walls as they were, had, in the absence of scientific skill and correctness, the flash of latent genius in obscurity, the instinct of art, spontaneousness, freedom of touch, and vivid life.