fields near Barbizon will not fail to recognize the close
relations and the intimate knowledge Millet had of these humble
peasants. As you gaze at the great mounds of wheat with the
crowd of laborers resting, you seem to catch the very spirit of
the dignity of labor that the artist so admirably portrays in
all his work. You see not only these particular toilers but all
the laborers of earth, who by the sweat of their brows make the
earth yield her increase.

"His figures seem to be uncouth and of the earth; they are
children of Nature who have been so long in contact with the
elements and soil they seem to partake of the sternness of the
landscape quite as much as the sturdy oaks tried by the storms
and stress of unnumbered days of exposure. His Shepherdess is
also worth considering and represents his aim in art." These are
his words: "I would wish that the beings I represent should have
the air of being consecrated to their position, and that it
should be impossible to imagine that the idea could occur to
them of their being other than that which they are--the
beautiful is the suitable."

What poems of grace and beauty the works of Corot are! How well
he knew the trees, for he lived among them and loved them. No
other artist has so marvelously portrayed the very soul of trees
in their swaying, singing, dew-tipped branches. They are vast
harps through which wandering breezes murmur aeolian melodies,
"morning and evening anthems" to the Creator. His paintings have
a freshness and fragrance of the dawn; a mystery seems to hang
over them. The very spirit of the morn broods over that classic
landscape of his "Dante and Vergil." In the opening words of