Millet's life in itself explains his art. Never have heart and hand, a man and his work, tallied with each other as they did in him. He does not belong to those painters who, even when one admires them, give one nevertheless a sense that they could just as easily have produced something different. Let any one consider his works and read the letters published in Sensier's book: the man whom one knows from the letters lives in his works, and these works are the natural illustration of the book in which the man has depicted himself. In the unity of man and artist lies the source of his strength, the secret of his greatness. [Illustration: _S. Low & Co._ JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.] Even the circumstances over which he triumphed necessitated his being the painter that he actually was, if he became one at all. He was not born in a city where a child's eyes are everywhere met by works of art--pictures which no doubt early awaken the feeling for art, but which just as easily disturb a free outlook into nature. Moreover, he did not spring from one of those families where art is itself practised, or where art is discussed and taste early guided upon definite lines. He was a peasant, whose father and grandfather were peasants before him, and whose brothers were farm labourers. He was born in 1814, far away from Paris, in a little Norman village hard by the sea, and there he grew up. The regular and majestic plunge of the waves against the granite rocks of the coast, the solemn murmurs of the ebb and flow of the sea, the moaning of the wind in the apple trees and the old oaks of his father's garden, were the first sounds which struck upon the ear in Gruchy, near Cherbourg. It has been adduced that his father loved music, and had had success as the leader of the village choir. But though there may have always been a dim capacity for art in the youngster's blood, there was nothing calculated to strengthen it in his education. Millet's sturdy father had no idea of making an artist of his son; the boy saw no artist at work in the neighbourhood; nature and instinct guided him alone.