-one that in some
moods seems the greatest of them all--"The Shepherdess" (Pl. 9), that
is, or used to be, in the Chauchard collection. In this nobly tranquil
work, in which there is no hint of sadness or revolt, are to be found
all his usual inevitableness of composition and perfection of
draughtsmanship--note the effect of repetition in the sheep, "forty
feeding like one"--but the glory of the picture is in the infinite
recession of the plain that lies flat, the exact notation of the
successive positions upon it of the things that stand upright, from the
trees and the hay wain in the extreme distance, almost lost in sky,
through the sheep and the sheep-dog and the shepherdess herself,
knitting so quietly, to the dandelions in the foreground, each with its
"aureole" of light. Of these simple, geometrical relations, and of the
enveloping light and air by which they are expressed, he has made a hymn
of praise.

The background of "The Gleaners," with its baking stubble-field under
the midday sun, its grain stacks and laborers and distant farmstead, all
tremulous in the reflected waves of heat, indistinct and almost
indecipherable yet unmistakable, is nearly as wonderful; and no one has
ever so rendered the solemnity and the mystery of night as has he in the
marvellous "Sheepfold" of the Walters collection. But the greatest of
all his landscapes--one of the greatest landscapes ever painted--is his
"Spring" (Pl. 10), of the Louvre, a pure landscape this time, containing
no figure. In the intense green of the sunlit woods against the black
rain-clouds that are passing away, in the jewel-like brilliancy of the
blossoming apple-trees, and the wet grass in that clear air after the
shower; in the glorious rainbow drawn in dancing light across the sky,
we may see, if anywhere in art, some reflection of the "infinite
splendors" which Millet tells us he saw in nature.

[Illustration: Plate 8.--Millet. "The First Steps."]

In the face of such results as these it seems absurd to discuss the
question whether or not Millet was technically a master of his trade, as
if the methods that produced them could possibly be anything but good
methods for the purpose; but it is still too much the fashion to say and
think that the great artist was a poor painter--to speak slightingly of
his accomplishment in oil-painting and to seem to prefer his drawings
and pastels to his pictures. We have seen that he was a supremely able
technician in his p