During the two centuries which elapsed between these great masters many changes had come over the lives of European people. The spread of education, permeating down even to the lowest classes, had tended to the sobering of habits; and the French peasant, with the partial uplifting and greater contact through more equitable distribution of the land which the Revolution had bestowed upon him, was a quieter man than his Dutch prototype who had preceded him by a couple of centuries. In Millet's rendering of the life he found around him, the same incisive truth and absorbing sincerity is to be found as in the Dutchmen with whom I have compared him, and consequently Millet can be considered as a direct lineal descendant of the mighty Brueghel. The entire absence of the Dutchmen's brutality in Millet's work is to be accounted for, firstly, by the extreme gentleness of his own disposition; and, secondly, by his study of some of the greatest masters of the Italian renaissance. His keenness of perception can be gauged by his enthusiastic appreciation of Andrea Mantegna at a time when the merits of that master were not understood as they are to-day. Many of his noblest inspirations were conceived under the Paduan painter's influence, and one could cite many compositions in which the train of thought of the two masters seems to run upon parallel lines. Upon first regarding a picture of Millet's mature years, one wonders from whence come those subtleties of line and tone. There is nothing analogous to them in the works of his contemporaries. The difference too between his early efforts and those of his later years is stupendous, but the lines which his development pursued are essentially due to the simplicity of the life he led and the high ideal he invariably kept before him. Living, as he always did, a life of struggle, a never-ending battle against seemingly overwhelming odds, he was in a position to grasp the sorrows and troubles of the simple folk by whom he was surrounded. He further saw that work, although they themselves were not aware of it, alone made life liveable to them. He shared their struggles in their most intense and poignant form. In fact when one contemplates the life which Millet led, both at Gréville and at Barbizon, with its strenuousness and earnestness, faced, moreover, with the ever-present dread of want, it is to be wondered that he had the courage to live his life as he did.