Cottet gets his suggestions for the most part from Brittany. Almost all his works, in any case his most famous ones, tell of Breton nature and the life of the Breton people. His “Midsummer Fire” is very affecting. The holiday fire is kindled beneath the clear sky of a midsummer night; around it assemble the Bretons, ever faithful to their traditions. The smoke ascends vertically; the flames glow on the countenances gazing on them. Old women and children they are, for the most part, who celebrate the solstice according to ancient custom; there are hardly one or two men among the devout multitude. The sterner sex, the middle-aged, laugh at the superstition; but the grandmothers foster the custom of their ancestors, and entwine it into the earliest childhood of their grandchildren as a dear remembrance that grows up with all the joys and sorrows of their infant years. Thus what is old is retained and is handed down from generation to generation. Cottet has expressively illustrated this rule of folk-lore, not because he intended it, but because he was true. Far and wide, as far as the eye can reach, other fires are burning, and mirroring themselves in the sea, and you can guess that, even around the furthest, which are hardly visible in the night, the villagers are making a circle, just as round the flame in the foreground. One single note hovers over the whole of this landscape; one single feeling dominates the soul of all this population. Each one of these old women whose glances are submerged in the holy flame feels herself at this instant a unit of the whole race inhabiting the hereditary granite soil, and part and parcel of her forefathers who have long rested beneath the sod. Thus a real work of art, without straying into literature, points far beyond its own boundaries.