THE EFFECT OF PAINTING ON THE MIND.
Reading edition
The effects of the pencil are sometimes wonderful. It is said that Alexander trembled and grew pale on seeing a picture of Palamedes betrayed to death by his friends. It doubtless brought to his mind a stinging remembrance of his treatment of Aristonicus.
Portia could bear with an unshaken constancy her last separation from Brutus; but when she saw, a few hours after, a picture of the Parting of Hector and Andromache, she burst into a flood of tears. Full as seemed her cup of sorrow, the painter suggested new ideas of grief, or impressed more strongly her own.
An Athenian courtezan, in the midst of a riotous banquet with her lovers, accidentally cast her eye on the portrait of a philosopher that hung opposite to her seat; the happy character of temperance and virtue struck her with so lively an image of her own unworthiness, that she instantly quitted the room, and retiring home, became ever after an example of temperance, as she had before been of debauchery.