Corot at the height of his powers is seen in the "Souvenir d'Italie." The thousand subtle nuances of exquisite colour in the luminous sky, the refined drawing and firm painting of the trees, and the happy confidence revealed by every brush mark upon the canvas, make it one of the most delightful and, we may say, most "lovable" of its creator's works.] There were other critics at this same period who were less hampered by preconceived notions, and came to a very different conclusion than those who were able to dismiss the whole Nature school with contempt as "pampered humbugs." Delacroix could see that Corot was not "only a man of landscapes" but "a rare genius," and he was not alone. Every year, as one masterpiece after another appeared at the Salon from the "mud-dauber's" brush, the general body of artists and art-lovers were more disposed to give him the rank that was his due. In 1848 Corot was elected one of the judges for the annual exhibition by his fellow-artists. He himself sent nine pictures, and one of them, a "Site d'Italie," was purchased by the State. The following year Corot was again one of the judges, and in 1850 he was elected a member of the "Jury de Peinture." He had become a personage in the art-world of France. Already in 1846 he had been decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honour, to the astonishment of his worthy father, who could not in the least understand on what grounds such an honour had been done to his failure of a son. The history of Corot's following years there is no necessity to follow in detail. Like the years which had gone before, they were fulfilled with happy labour. He journeyed through the length and breadth of France, to Switzerland, and elsewhere, "finding landscapes" with that apprehensive eye of his, and recording them on canvas or on paper, or storing them in the pigeon-holes of a memory that in such matters never failed him. For the rest the record is one of a continually increasing appreciation of his work. It started in a very small circle, extending thence in ever-widening ripples. Almost imperceptibly his fame increased until he became an acknowledged master. In view of the sums paid for many of them since, the prices he obtained for his pictures seem ridiculously small, but there is no reason to suppose that he was anything but well content with such material rewards as came his way. Indeed, so much to the contrary, for some time he looked upon the increasing prices which purchasers were willing to pay with a mild astonishment and a kind of humorous fear that it was too good to be true. The slighting of his earlier work and the laudation excited by the later had precisely the same effect upon him--that is none at all. If one had asked him, I think he would have said both alike were out of perspective. And he would have spoken without any taint of bitterness: for, from the very first, he was both confident and humble.