record in it almost, save a long list of pictures painted, and a gradual
growth, not in popularity (for that Millet never really attained at
all), but in the esteem of the best judges, which of course brought with
it at last, first ease, then comfort, and finally comparative riches.
Millet was able now to paint such subjects as pleased him best, and he
threw himself into his work with all the fervour of his intensely
earnest and poetical nature. Whatever might be the subject which he
undertook, he knew how to handle it so that it became instinct with his
own fine feeling for the life he saw around him. In 1852 he painted his
"Man spreading Manure." In itself, that is not a very exalted or
beautiful occupation; but what Millet saw in it was the man not the
manure--the toiling, sorrowing, human fellow-being, whose labour and
whose spirit he knew so well how to appreciate. And in this view of the
subject he makes us all at once sympathize. Other pictures of this
period are such as "The Gleaners," "The Reapers," "A Peasant grafting a
Tree," "The Potato Planters," and so forth. These were very different
subjects indeed from the dignified kings and queens painted by
Delaroche, or the fiery battle-pieces of Delacroix; but they touch a
chord in our souls which those great painters fail to strike, and his
treatment of them is always truthful, tender, melancholy, and exquisite.

Bit by bit, French artistic opinion began to recognize the real
greatness of the retiring painter at Barbizon. He came to be looked upon
as a true artist, and his pictures sold every year for increasingly
large prices. Still, he had not been officially recognized; and in
France, where everything, even to art and the theatre, is under
governmental regulation, this want of official countenance is always
severely felt. At last, in 1867, Millet was awarded the medal of the
first class, and was appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. The
latter distinction carries with it the right to wear that little tag of