, and is now in the Louvre "in perpetuity." This sum paid
for this one picture represents a larger amount of money than passed
through the hands of Millet during his entire life; and yet it is not
one-half what another "Millet" brought. The "Angelus" was sold for the
sum of eight hundred thousand francs--a larger amount than was ever
before paid for a single canvas.

It is idle to say that no picture is worth such a sum. Anything is worth
what some one else will pay for it.

The number of "Millets," it may be explained, is limited, and with men in
America who have incomes of ten million dollars or more a year, no sane
man dare prophesy what price the "Sower" may yet command.

Millet himself, were he here, would be aghast at the prices paid for his
work, and he would turn, too, with disfavor from the lavish adulation
bestowed upon his name.

This homely, simple artist was a profound thinker; a sympathetic dreamer;
a noble-hearted, generous man; so truthful and lovable that his virtues
have been counted a weakness; and so they are--for the planet Earth.

JOSHUA REYNOLDS

To make it people's interest to advance you, by showing that
their business will be better done by you than by any other
person, is the only solid foundation of success; the rest is
accident.

--_Reynolds to His Nephew_

[Illustration: JOSHUA REYNOLDS]

On the curious little river Plym, five miles from Plymouth, is the hamlet
of Plympton. It is getting on towards two hundred years since Joshua
Reynolds was born there. The place has not changed so very much with the
centuries: there still stand the quaint stone houses, built on arches
over the sidewalk, and there, too, is the old Norman church with its high
mullioned windows. Chester shows the best example of that very early
architecture, and Plympton is Chester done in pigmy.

The birthplace of Reynolds is one of these houses in the "Row"; a
greengrocer now has the lower floor of the house for his shop, while his
numerous family live upstairs.

The Reverend Samuel Reynolds also had a numerous family--there being
eleven children--so the present occupation is a realistic restoration of
a previous condition.

The grocer has a leaning toward art, for his walls are well papered with
chromos and posters; and as he sold a cabbage to a good housewife he
nipped off a leaf for a pen of rabbits that stood in the doorway, and
talked to me glibly of Reynolds and Gainsboro