high-roads of the French rural districts. At the same time, he must be
within easy reach of Paris; for though he had almost made up his mind
not to exhibit any more at the Salon--people didn't care to see his
reapers or his fishermen--he must still manage to keep himself within
call of possible purchasers; and for this purpose he selected the little
village of Barbizon, on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau.

The woods of Fontainebleau stand to Paris in somewhat the same relation
that Windsor Great Park stands to London; only, the scenery is more
forest-like, and the trees are big and antique looking. By the outskirts
of this great wood stands the pretty hamlet of Barbizon, a single long
street of small peasant cottages, built with the usual French rural
disregard of beauty or cleanliness. At the top of the street, in a
little three-roomed house, the painter and his wife settled down
quietly; and here they lived for twenty-seven years, long after Millet's
name had grown to be famous in the history of contemporary French
painting. An English critic, who visited the spot in the days of
Millet's greatest celebrity, was astonished to find the painter, whom he
had come to see, strolling about the village in rustic clothes, and even
wearing the _sabots_ or wooden shoes which are in France the social
mark of the working classes, much as the smock-frock used once to be in
the remoter country districts of England. Perhaps this was a little bit
of affectation on Millet's part--a sort of proud declaration of the fact
that in spite of fame and honours he still insisted upon counting
himself a simple peasant; but if so, it was, after all, a very pretty
and harmless affectation indeed. Better to see a man sticking
pertinaciously to his wooden shoes, than turning his back upon old
friends and old associations in the days of his worldly prosperity.

At Barbizon Millet's life moved on so quietly that there is nothing to