his life in very straitened circumstances. He was often behind with his rent, and sometimes induced his landlord to accept pictures instead of money. The landlord in his dealings is said to have been very shrewd, and to have gained possession of many of his tenant's best pictures. After the artist's death he turned the family out of the home that had been so long theirs, laid his hands on all Millet's paintings that the arrears in rent would give excuse for, and, after realizing by a sale of a part of the canvases he had acquired sixty thousand dollars, he shut up the atelier for once and all. At least that is the way the tale runs as told in the village now. The son and successor of Millet's landlord has something the same ogreish reputation. Visitors are excluded from the premises, the studio shutters are always closed, and no one is allowed a glimpse of its fabled treasures. All you can see of the studio is its rear, which backs up against the street walk. It is low and white, and an air of silence and gloom overhangs it. Once I found the gate of the place ajar, and, in spite of all I had heard about its owner, I ventured to go inside. But there was small suggestion of the Millet days. The grounds are laid out with lawn and shade-trees, and the dwelling has been much altered. It is no longer the cottage of a peasant, but the country residence of one of the lesser gentry. Rousseau's home is only a few doors distant. It is larger than was Millet's, and sets back from the street under the shadows of some tall trees. It adjoins the little church, and you can approach it only by entering the churchyard. Not until recently did the village have a church, and the edifice is the gift of two actresses who retired a few years ago to Barbizon to spend their last days. One of the actresses is still living, a bent, feeble old woman over eighty. I used to see her several times a day, her cane in her hand and supported by a white-coiffured nun, shuffling along the street to devotions at her church. The building has the look of a pretty cottage, it is so small and so embowered with the leafage of vines and trees, while the yard in front is a garden of flowers and shrubs. On the borders of the paths are several settees, and when the shadows lengthened in the warm afternoons the retreat was cool and inviting. It seemed to be a favorite loitering-place of Millet's son, the only one of the artist's children still living in the village, for I often saw him there. He has followed his father's profession, and is said to do very good work. The nearest house of worship in Millet's time was at Chailly, two miles distant. He was a devoted attendant, and walked there to service every Sunday. The Chailly church is locally believed to be the one which appears in " The Angelus," but most probably the landscape of the picture is a memory or vision; and it is the less easy to make good the claim of the Chailly church as the reality has only a stumpy tower, while a spire appears in the painting. The attitude of prayer taken by the two figures was also more likely to have been a memory than a characteristic of Barbizon, although Millet worked from local models. It would certainly have been more typical of his boyhood region on the remote Norman coast than of the country about Paris, where old customs always weaken first. You see nothing of such observance of the Angelus now at Barbizon, and I do not know that it survives in any part of the Republic. The Angelus still rings, morning, noon, and night, but it is recognized only as a signal to begin or stop work, not for prayer. From the far end of Barbizon street you can see on a near hill-slope within the Forest a great boulder with a large bronze tablet inset on its face. When you draw nearer, you find on the tablet a portrait head of Millet coupled with that of Rousseau. It seems a noble and fitting monument to these two giants of their day and generation, lovers of the Forest and of nature in every mood, prophets and seers who have interpreted the beautiful to all mankind. The Forest is much criss-crossed with roads and paths, and exploration is easy, the only danger being that of losing one's way. By the time I left Barbizon I had seen nearly all of it within moderate walking distance. It presents a great deal of variety. You find primeval woodland and park-like groves and pastoral glades, and you find wild gorges strewn with boulders that look the waste of some ancient geological quarry of the gods. The boulders are not confined to the gorges. They are a peculiar feature of Fontainebleau, and you may come across them in the woodland almost anywhere-great loose, rounded rocks, some of them scattered, others lying in rude heaps. At times the forest fires run through the woods; the trees are killed; the peaty soil is consumed, and it takes a long time for the charred earth to heal and for new growths to start. Sections recently burnt bristle with dead trees still standing, and their leafless twigs bare against the sky make the scene strange and depressing. But pass out of the burned districts and you have the company of the lofty pine-trees or of the feathery, graceful beeches, with their sinewy, mottled trunks, or of the great oaks, gnarled and angular and crowned with dark, heavy foliage. In the opens grow the heather, the broom, and other shrubbery tangling among the lichened rocks; while in the shadowy, sun-flecked forest depths you find a carpet of ferns and thin grasses. Birds sing, pigeons coo, a cuckoo calls far away, and you hear the caw of rooks above the tree-tops. Fontainebleau is the largest of all the French forests. You can travel continuously in it in one direction for twenty miles. Its greatest lack is the entire absence of streams or ponds, for the rainfall is wholly absorbed by the sandy soil and chalky rocks. I was told that the Forest did boast of a single pool in a certain hilltop hollow, but when a friend who knew the Forest undertook to show me this rarity it had disappeared as the result of recent dry weather. There are deer. and other wild creatures in the Forest, but I saw nothing of such denizens, unless I except some little lizards that I found in my pathway basking in the hot rays of the sun. A favorite resort in the immediate vicinity of Barbizon is a cavern of considerable size, famed as the lodging-place of an old-time band of brigands. So secluded was their forest retreat that they robbed on the highways between Fontainebleau and Paris for nearly three years before their lair was discovered. The Forest trees and rocks were reminiscent of Rousseau rather than of Millet. The latter's memory comes home to one more keenly in the fields, for though he was a lover of the forest, it did not appeal to him as did the open farmlands. In putting his impressions on canvas he chose to work in low tones, making no appeal to the eye through brilliance of color or the attractiveness of the figures he introduced. Often his types were rude to the verge of ugliness, for he abhorred anything in the least tainted with prettiness or sentimentality. Labor was most often his theme, and to it he added weariness, which he says "is the common lot of humanity." This view, which largely the result of his own somber experiences in life, he painted into his pictures with all the sincerity of a great soul. But if there is always present an undertone of sadness in his work, there is also a vein of sweetness, of courage, and of absolute honesty; and this, taken altogether, was Millet. was DWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN'S retirement from the editorship of the New a more than passing interest in the history of contemporary journalism; for Mr. Godkin is one of the most thoroughly trained editors of his time, with journalistic ability of a high order, distinct gifts as a leader-writer, and the courage of his convictions. The Evening Post" has held for many years a place of exceptional dignity and influence, and under Mr. Godkin's editorship its reputation became National. An Irishman by birth, educated at a grammar school near Wakefield in England, graduating from Queen's College, Belfast, in 1851, where his most influential teachers were not the college instructors but John Stuart Mill, Grote, and Bentham, America, as Mr. Godkin has recently said, was his promised land. Mr. Godkin entered journalism by the difficult and perilous way of the war correspondent. He represented the London "News" during the siege of Sebastopol, and was present when the town was taken. He came to this country in the autumn of 1856, began to prepare himself for the prac tice of the law, wrote letters to the London "Daily News," and became an editorial writer on the New York "Times." In 1865 the "Nation" was started on its influential career under Mr. Godkin's leadership. Its ability, both editorial and literary, the definiteness of its convictions and the force with which they were expressed, soon made it a power, especially among the most highly educated men in the country. It became in a peculiar sense, not the organ, but the representative, of the academic, scientific, and literary classes. In 1882 Mr. Godkin became the editor of the New York" Evening Post," and the "Nation" practically became the weekly edition of the "Post." From the beginning Mr. Godkin has been the determined and tireless enemy of the "machine" and the "boss," and the ardent advocate of Civil Service Reform. Mr. Godkin's influence as an editor would have been very much larger if his spirit had been constructive rather than purely critical. His ability to hate bad things was one source of his power; but sometimes the habit of criticism has blinded him to movements which should have had his aid, and to men who deserved his support. |