 The effect of this picture would have been much more intense had the painter treated it as a mere fact, and had not brought upon the scene those flying Cupids who turn the thing into a mythological fable. Real boys dressed like Cupids would have been proper, but aerial beings are impertinences, and put one out when one is thinking of the sex. If this amorous pageant had been a mere fiction, instead of having actually taken place, still the power of its delineation would have consisted in its probability.
