Velasquez was twenty-four—dark, daring, silent, with a face and form that proclaimed him a strong and valiant soul. Strong men can well afford to be gentle—those who know can well cultivate silence.

The young man did not storm the doors of the Alcazar. No; at Madrid he went quietly to work copying Titians in the gallery, and incidentally painting portraits—Royalty must come to him. He had faith in his power: he could wait. His wife knew the Court would call him—he knew it, too—the Court of Spain needed Velasquez. It is a fine thing to make yourself needed.

Nearly a year had passed, and Velasquez gave it out quietly that he was about to return to his home in Seville. Artistic Madrid rubbed its eyes. The Minister of State, the great Olivarez, came to him with a commission from the King and a goodly payment in advance, begging that, as soon as he had made a short visit to Seville, he should return to Madrid. Apartments had already been set aside for him in the Alcazar Palace. Would he not kindly comply?

Such a request from the King was really equal to an order. Velasquez surely had no intention of declining the compliment, since he had angled for it most ingeniously; but he took a little time to consider it. Of course he talked it over with his wife and her father, and we can imagine they had a quiet little supper by themselves in honor of the event.

And so in the month of May, Sixteen Hundred Twenty-three, Diego de Silva Velasquez duly became a member of the Royal Household, and very soon was the companion, friend, adviser and attendant of the King—that post which he was to hold for thirty-six years, ere Death should call him hence.

"The farmer thinks that place and power are fine things, but let him know that the President has paid dear for his White House," said the sage of Concord.

The most miserable man I ever knew was one who married a rich woman, managed her broad acres, looked after her bonds and made report of her stocks. If the stocks failed to pay dividends, or the acres were fallow, my friend had to explain why to the tearful wife and sundry sarcastic next of kin.

The man was a Jeffersonian Democrat and preached the Life of Simplicity, because we always preach about things that are not ours. He rode behind horses that had docked tails, and apologized for being on earth, to an awful butler in solemn black.

The man had married for a home—he got it. When he wanted funds for himself, he was given dole, or else was put to the necessity of juggling the Expense-Account.

If he wished to invite friends to his home, he had to prove them standard-bred, morally sound in wind and limb, and free from fault or blemish.

The good man might have lived a thoroughly happy life, with everything supplied that he needed, but he acquired the Sanitarium Habit, for which there is no cure but poverty. And this man could not be poor even if he wanted to, for there were no grounds for divorce. His wife loved him dearly, and her income of five thousand dollars a month came along with startling regularity, willy-nilly.

Finally, at Hot Springs, Death gave him treatment and he was freed from pain.

From this o'ertrue incident it must not be imagined that wealth and position are bad things. Health is potential power. Wealth is an engine that can be used for good if you are an engineer; but to be tied to the flywheel of an engine is rather unfortunate. Had my friend been big enough to rise supreme over horses with docked tails, to subjugate a butler, to defy the next of kin and manage the wife (without letting her know it), all would have been well.

But it is a Herculean task to cope with the handicap of wealth. Mediocre men can endure failure; for, as Robert Louis the beloved has pointed out, failure is natural, but worldly success is an abnormal condition. In order to stand success you must be of very stern fiber, with all the gods on your side.

The Alcazar Palace looked strong, solid and self-sufficient on the outside. But inside, like every Court, it was a den of quibble, quarrel, envy, and the hatred which, tinctured with fear, knocks an anvil-chorus from day-dawn to dark.

A thousand people made up the household of Philip the Fourth. Any one of these could be dismissed in an hour—the power of Olivarez, the Minister, was absolute. Very naturally there were plottings and counterplottings.

A Court is a prison to most of its inmates; no freedom is there— thought is strangled and inspiration still-born. Yet life is always breaking through. When locked in a cell in a Paris prison, Horace Greeley wrote, "Thank God, at last I am free from intrusion."

"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage," laughed Lovelace. Have not some of the great books of the world been written in prison? Things work by antithesis; and if your discipline is too severe, you get no discipline at all. Puritanical pretense, hypocrisy and a life of repression, with "thou shalt not" set on a hair-trigger, have made more than one man bold, genuine and honest. Draw the bow far enough this way, and your arrow will go a long way that. Forbid a man to think for himself or to act for himself, and you may add the joy of piracy and the zest of smuggling to his life. In the Spanish Court, Velasquez found life a lie, public manners an exaggeration, etiquette a pretense, and all the emotions put up in sealed cans. Fashionable Society is usually nothing but Canned Life. Look out for explosions! Velasquez held the balance true by an artistic courage and an audacity of private thought that might not have been his in a freer atmosphere. He did not wear his art upon his sleeve: he outwardly conformed, but inwardly his soul towered over every petty annoyance, and all the vain power of the fearing and quibbling little princes touched him not.

Spain, under the rule of Philip the Second, grew great. Her ships sailed every sea—the world contributed to her wealth. Art comes after a surplus has accumulated and the mere necessaries of life have been provided. Philip built great palaces, founded schools, gave encouragement to the handicrafts, and sent his embassies scouring the world for the treasures of Art. The King was a practical man, blunt, farseeing, direct. He knew the cost of things, studied out the best ways, ascertained right methods. He had the red corpuscle, the deep convolution, and so was King. His ministers did his bidding.

The grim sarcasm of entailed power is a thing so obvious that one marvels it has escaped the recognition of mankind until yesterday. But stay! Men have always seen its monstrous absurdity—hence the rack.

The Spanish Inquisition, in which Church and State combined against God, seems an awful extreme to show the depths of iniquity to which Pride married to Hypocrisy can sink. Yet martyrdom has its compensation. The spirit flies home upon the wings of victory, and in the very moment of so-called defeat, the man has the blessed consolation that he is still master of his fate—captain of his soul.

The lesson of the Inquisition was worth the price—the martyrs bought freedom for us. The fanged dogs of war, once turned loose upon the man who dared to think, have left as sole successor only a fat and harmless poodle, known as Social Ostracism. This poodle is old, toothless and given over to introspection; it has to be fed on pap; its only exercise is to exploit the horse-blocks, doze in milady's lap, and dream of a long-lost canine paradise. The dog- catcher awaits around the corner.

Philip the Third was an etiolated and perfumed dandy. In him culture had begun to turn yellow. Men who pride themselves upon their culture haven't any of which to speak. All the beauties of art, this man thought, were exclusively for him and his precious company of lisping exquisites and giggling, mincing queans. The thought that those who create beauty are also they who possess it, never dawned upon this crack-pated son of tired sheets.

He lived to enjoy—and so he never enjoyed anything.

Surfeit and satiety overtook him in the royal hog-wallow; digestion and zest took flight. Philip the Third speedily became a wooden Indian on wheels, moved by his Minister of State, the Duke of Lerma.

Huge animals sustain huge parasites, and so the Court of Philip the Third, with its fools, dwarfs, idiots and all of its dancing, jiggling, juggling, wasteful folly, did not succeed in wrecking the land. When Philip the Third traveled, he sent hundreds of men ahead to beat the swamps, day and night, in the vicinity of his royal presence, so as to silence the frogs. He thought their croaking was a personal matter meant for him.

I think he was right.

How the Lords of Death must chuckle in defiant glee when they send malaria and night into the palaces of the great through cracks and crevices! Philip's bloated, unkingly body became full of disease and pain; lingering unrest racked him; the unseen demons he could not exorcise, danced on his bed, wrenched his members and played mad havoc with each quivering nerve. And so he died. Then comes Philip the Fourth, immortal through his forty portraits painted by Velasquez. Philip was only fourteen when his father died. He was a rareripe, and showed strength and decision far beyond his years. His grandfather, Philip the Second, was his ideal, and he let it be known right speedily that his reign was to be one of moderation and simplicity, modeled along the lines of Philip the Great.

The Duke of Lerma, Minister of State, who had so long been the actual ruler of Spain, was deposed, and into his place slipped the suave and handsome Olivarez, Gentleman-in-Waiting to the young King.

Olivarez was from Seville, and had known the family of Velasquez. It was through his influence that Diego so soon got the nod of Royalty. The King was eighteen, Velasquez was twenty-four, and Olivarez not much older—all boys together. And the fact that Velasquez secured the appointment of Court Painter with such ease was probably owing to his dashing horsemanship, as much as to his being a skilful painter.

At Harvard once I saw a determined effort made to place a famous "right tackle" in the chair of Assistant Professor of Rhetoric. The plan was only given over with great reluctance, when it was discovered that the "right tackle" was beautifully ignorant of the subject he would have to tackle. Even then it was argued he could "cram"—keeping one lesson in advance of his class.

But Olivarez knew Velasquez could paint, and the artist's handsome face, stalwart frame and fearless riding did the rest. The young King was considered the best horseman in Madrid: Velasquez and Olivarez took pains never to outdo him in the joust.

The biography of Olivarez as a study of life is a better subject far than either the life of Velasquez or the King. Their lives were too successful to be interesting. Olivarez is a fine example of a man growing great through exercise. Read history and behold how commonplace men have often had greatness thrust upon them and met the issue. I have seen an absurd Class B lawyer elevated into a judgeship, and rise to the level of events, keeping silence, looking wise, hugging his dignity hard, until there came a time when the dignity really was a fair fit. Trotters often need toe-weights to give them ballast and balance—so do men need responsibility. We have had at least three commonplace men for President of the United States, who live in history as adequately great—and they were. Various and sundry good folk will here arise and say the germ of greatness was in these men all the time, awaiting the opportunity to unfold. And the answer is correct, right and proper; but a codicil should then be added to the effect that the germ of greatness is in every man, but we fall victims of arrested development, and success or society, like a worm i' the bud, feeds on our damask cheek.

Philip was nipped in the bud by falling into the protecting shadow of Olivarez. The Prime Minister provided boar-hunts and tourneys and masquerades and fetes. Philip's life of simplicity faded off into dressing in black—all else went on as before. Philip glided into the line of least resistance and signed every paper that he was told to sign by his gracious, winning, inflexible Minister—the true type of the iron hand in the velvet glove. From his twentieth year, after that first little flurry of pretended power, the novelty of ruling wore away; and for more than forty years he never either vetoed an act or initiated one. His ministers arranged his recreations, his gallantries, his hours of sleep. He was ruled and never knew it, and here the Richelieu-like Olivarez showed his power. It was anything to keep the King from thinking, and Spain, the Mother of Magnificence, went drifting to her death.

There were already three Court Painters when Velasquez received his appointment. They were Italians appointed by Philip the Third. Their heads were full of tradition and precedent, and they painted like their masters, who had been pupils of men who had worked with Titian—beautiful attenuations three times reduced. We only know their names now because they raised a pretty chorus of protest when Velasquez appeared at the palace. They worked all the wires they knew to bring about his downfall, and then dwindled away into chronic Artistic Jealousy, which finally struck in; and they were buried. That the plots, challenges and constant knockings of these underling court painters ever affected Velasquez, we can not see. He swung right along at prodigious strides, living his own life—a life outside and beyond all the pretense and vanity of place and power.

The King came by a secret passage daily to the studio to watch Velasquez work. There was always a chair for him, and the King even had an easel and sets of brushes and palette with which he played at painting. Pacheco, who had come up to Madrid and buzzed around encroaching on the Samuel Pepys copyright, has said that the King was a skilled painter. But this statement was for publication during the King's lifetime.

When Velasquez could not keep the King quiet in any other way, it seems he made him sit for his picture. The studio was never without an unfinished portrait of the King. From eighteen to fifty-four he sat to Velasquez—and it is always that same tall, spindle-legged, impassive form and the dull, unspeaking face. There is no thought there, no aspiration, no hope too great for earth, no unrequited love, no dream unrealized. The King was incapable of love as he was of hate. And Velasquez did not use his art to flatter: he had the artistic conscience. Truth was his guiding star. And the greatness of Velasquez is shown in that all subjects were equally alike to him. He did not select the classic or peculiar. Little painters are always choosing their subjects and explaining that this or that may be pretty or interesting, but they will tell you it is "unpaintable" —which means that they can not paint it.

"I can write well on any topic—all are alike to me!" said Dean Swift to Stella.

"Then write me an essay on a broomstick," answered Stella.

And Swift wrote the essay—full of abstruse reasons, playful wit and charming insight.

The long, oval, dull face of Philip lured Velasquez. He analyzed every possible shade of emotion of which this man was capable, and stripped his soul bare. The sallow skin, thin curling locks, nerveless hands, and unmeaning eyes are upon the walls of every gallery of Christendom—matchless specimens of the power to sink self, and reveal the subject.

That is why Whistler is right when he says that Velasquez is the painters' painter. "The Blacksmith" by Whistler shows you the blacksmith, not Whistler; Rembrandt's pictures of his mother show the woman; Franz Hals gives you the Burgomaster, not himself. Shakespeare of all writers is the most impersonal—he does not give himself away.

When Rubens painted a portrait of Philip the Fourth he put a dash of daring, exuberant health in the face that was never there. The health and joy of life was in Rubens, and he could not keep it off his palette. There is a sameness in every Rubens, because the imagination of the man ran over, and falsified his colors; he always gives you a deal of Rubens.

But stay! that expression, "sinking self," is only a figure of speech. At the last, the true artist never sinks self: he is always supreme, and towers above every subject, every object, that he portrays. The riotous health and good-cheer of Rubens marked the man's limitations. He was not great enough to comprehend the small, the delicate, the insignificant and the absurd. Only a very great man can paint dwarfs, idiots, topers and kings. And so the many- sidedness of the great man continually deceives the world into thinking that he is the thing with which he associates; or, on the other hand, we say he "sinks self" for the time, whereas the truth is that in his own nature he comprehends the Whole. Shakespeare being the Universal Man, we lose him in the labyrinth of his winding and wondrous imagination. The greater comprehends the less.

The beginner paints what he sees; or, more properly, he paints what he thinks he sees. If he grows he will next paint what he imagines, as Rubens did. Then there is another stage which completes the spiral and comes back to the place of beginning, and the painter will again paint what he sees.

This Velasquez did, and this is what sets him apart. The difference between the last stage and the first is that the artist has learned to see.

To write is nothing—to know what to write is much. To paint is nothing—to see and know the object you are attempting to portray is everything.

"Shall I paint the thing just as I see it?" asked the ingenue of the great artist. "Why, yes," was the answer, "provided you do not see the thing as you paint it."

The King and the Painter grew old together. They met on a common ground of horses, dogs and art; and while the King used these things to kill time and cause him to forget self, the Painter found horses and dogs good for rest and recreation. But art was for Velasquez a religion, a sacred passion.

Nominally the Court Painter ranked with the Court Barber, and his allowance was the same. But Velasquez ruled the King, and the King knew it not. Like all wasteful, dissolute men, Philip the Fourth had spasms of repentance when he sought by absurd economy to atone for folly.

We are all familiar with individuals who will blow to the four winds good money, and much of it, on needless meat and drink for those who are neither hungry nor athirst, and take folks for a carriage-ride who should be abed, and then the next day buy a sandwich for dinner and walk a mile to save a five-cent carfare. Some of us have done these things; and so occasionally Philip would dole out money to buy canvas and complain of the size of it, and ask in injured tone how many pictures Velasquez had painted from that last bolt of cloth! But Velasquez was a diplomat and humored his liege; yet when the artist died, the administrator of his estate had to sue the State for a settlement, and it was ten years before the final amount due the artist was paid. After twenty years of devotion, Olivarez— outmatched by Richelieu in the game of statecraft—fell into disrepute and was dismissed from office. Monarchies, like republics, are ungrateful.

Velasquez sided with his old friend Olivarez in the quarrel, and thus risked incurring the sore displeasure of the King. The King could replace his Minister of State, but there was no one to take the place of the artist; so Philip bottled his wrath, gave Velasquez the right of his private opinion, and refused to accept his resignation.

There seems little doubt that it was a calamity for Velasquez that Philip did not send him flying into disgrace with Olivarez. Had Velasquez been lifted out on the toe of the King's displeasure, Italy would have claimed him, and the Vatican would have opened wide its doors. There, relieved of financial badgering, in the company of his equals, encouraged and uplifted, he might have performed such miracles in form and color that even the wonderful ceiling of the Sistine Chapel would have faded into the mediocre.

And again he might not—what more idle and fascinating than such speculation?

That the King endured the calm rebuke of Velasquez, when Olivarez was deposed, and still retained the Painter in favor, was probably because Rubens had assured the King that Velasquez as an artist was the master of any man in all Europe.

Velasquez made two trips to Italy, being sent on royal embassies to purchase statuary for the Prado Gallery, and incidentally to copy pictures. So there is many a Veronese, Tintoretto and Titian now in the Prado that was copied by Velasquez.

Think of the value of a Titian copied by Velasquez! And so faithfully was the copying done, even to inserting the signature, initials and date, that much doubt exists as to what pictures are genuine and what copies.

When Rubens appeared at the Court of Madrid, sent by the Duke of Mantua, with presents of Old Masters (done by himself), I can not but imagine the quiet confession, with smiles and popping of corks, that occurred when the wise and princely Rubens and the equally wise and princely Velasquez got together in some private corner.

The advent of Rubens at Madrid sent a thrill through the entire Court, and a lesser man than Velasquez would have quaked with apprehension when he found the King sitting to Rubens for a portrait in his own studio.

Not so Velasquez—he had done the King on canvas a score of times; no one else had ever been allowed to paint the King's portrait—and he was curious to see how the picture would come out.

Rubens, twenty-two years the senior of Velasquez, shrank a bit, it seems, from the contest, and connoisseurs have said that there is a little lack of the exuberant, joyous Rubensesque quality in the various pictures done by the gracious Fleming in Spain.

The taunt that many of the pictures attributed to Rubens were done by his pupils loses its point when we behold the prodigious amount of work that the master accomplished at Madrid in nine months—a dozen portraits, several groups, a score of pictures copied. And besides this, there was time for horseback rides when the King, Rubens and Velasquez galloped away together, when they climbed mountains, and when there were fetes and receptions to attend. Rubens was then over fifty, but the fire of his youth and that joyous animation of the morning, the years had not subdued.

Velasquez had many pupils, but in Murillo his skill as a teacher is best revealed. Several of his pupils painted exactly like him, save that they neglected to breathe into the nostrils of their work the breath of life. But Velasquez seems to have encouraged Murillo to follow the bent of his moody and melancholy genius—so Murillo was himself, not a diluted Velasquez.

The strong, administrative ability of Velasquez was prized by the King as much as his ability as a painter, and he was, therefore, advanced to the position of Master of Ceremonies. In this work, with its constant demand of close attention to petty details, his latter days were consumed. He died, aged sixty-one, a victim to tasks that were not worth the doing, but which the foolish King considered as important as painting deathless pictures.

So closely was the life of his wife blended with his own that in eight days after his passing she followed him across the Border, although the physicians declared that she had no disease. Husband and wife were buried in one grave in a church that a hundred years later was burned and never rebuilt. No stone marks their resting- place; and none is needed, for Velasquez lives in his work. The truth, splendor and beauty that he produced are on a hundred walls— the inspiration of men who do and dare—the priceless heritage of us who live today and of those who shall come after.



COROT

The sun sinks more and more behind the horizon. Bam! he throws his last ray, a streak of gold and purple which fringes the flying clouds. There, now it has entirely disappeared. Bien! bien! twilight commences. Heavens, how charming it is! There is now in the sky only the soft vaporous color of pale citron—the last reflection of the sun which plunges into the dark blue of the night, going from green tones to a pale turquoise of an unheard-of fineness and a fluid delicacy quite indescribable.... The fields lose their color, the trees form but gray or brown masses.... the dark waters reflect the bland tones of the sky. We are losing sight of things—but one still feels that everything is there—everything is vague, confused, and Nature grows drowsy. The fresh evening air sighs among the leaves— the birds, these voices of the flowers, are saying their evening prayer. —Corot's Letter to Graham



Most young artists begin by working for microscopic effects, trying to portray every detail, to see every leaf, stem and branch and reveal them in the picture.

The ability to draw carefully and finish painstakingly is very necessary, but the great artist must forget how to draw before he paints a great picture; just as every strong writer must put the grammar upon the shelf before he writes well. I once heard William Dean Howells say that any good, bright High-School girl of sixteen could pass a far better examination in rhetoric than he could—and the admission did Mr. Howells no discredit.

"Would you advise me to take a course in elocution?" once asked a young man with oratorical ambitions of Henry Ward Beecher.

"Yes, by all means. Study elocution very carefully, but you will have to forget it all before you ever become an orator," was the answer.

Corot began as a child by drawing very rude, crude, uncertain pictures, just such pictures as any schoolboy can draw. Next he began to "complete" his sketches, and work with infinite pains. If he sketched a house he showed whether the roof was shingled or made of straw or tile; his trees revealed the texture of the bark and showed the shape of the leaf, and every flower contained its pistil and stamens, and told the man knew his botany. Two of his pictures done in Rome in his twenty-ninth year, "The Colosseum" and "The Forum," now in the Louvre, are good pictures—complete in detail, painstaking, accurate, hard and tight in technique. They are bomb- proof—beyond criticism—absolutely safe. Have a care, Corot! Keep where you are and you will become an irreproachable painter. That is to say, you will paint just like a hundred other French painters. There will be a market for your wares, the critics will approve, and at the Salon your work will never be either enskyed nor consigned to the catacombs. Society will court you, fair ladies will smile and encourage. You will be a success; your name will be safely pigeonholed among the unobjectionable ones, and before your wind- combed shock of hair has turned to silver, you will be supplanted by a new crop of fashion's favorites.

It is a fact worth noting that the two greatest landscape-painters of all time were city-born and city-bred. Turner was born in London, the son of a barber, and Fate held him so in leash that he never got beyond the sound of Bow Bells until he was a man grown. Corot was born in Paris, and his first outdoor sketch, made at twenty-two, was done amidst the din and jostle of the quays of the Seine.

Five strong men made up the Barbizon School, and of these, three were reared in Paris—Paris the frivolous, Paris the pleasure- loving. Corot, Rousseau and Daubigny were children of the Metropolis.

I state these facts in the interests of truth, and also to ease conscience, for I am aware that I have glorified the country boy in pages gone before, as if God were kind to him alone.

Turner made over a million dollars by the work of his hands (reinforced by head and heart); and left a discard of nineteen thousand sketches to the British Nation. Was ever such an example of concentration, energy and industry known in the history of art? Corot, six feet one, weight two hundred, ruddy, simple, guileless, singing softly to himself as he walked, in peasant blouse, and sabot-shod, used to come up to Paris, his birthplace, two or three times a year, and the gamins would follow him on the streets, making remarks irrelevant and comments uncomplimentary, just as they might follow old Joshua Whitcomb on Broadway in New York.

British grandees often dress like farmers, for pride may manifest itself in simplicity, but the disinterested pose of Camille Corot, if pose it was, fitted him as the feathers fit a wild duck. If pose is natural it surely is not pose: and Corot, the simplest man in the world, was regarded by the many as a man of mannerisms. His work was so quiet and modest that the art world refused to regard it seriously. Corot was as unpretentious as Walt Whitman and just as free from vanity.

During the War of the Rebellion, Whitman bankrupted himself in purse and body by caring for the stricken soldiers. At the siege of Paris, Corot could have kept outside the barriers, but safety for himself he would not accept. He remained in the city, refused every comfort that he could not divide with others, spent all the money he had in caring for the wounded, nursed the sick by night and day, listened to the confessions of the dying, and closed the eyes of the dead. To everybody, especially the simple folk, the plain, the unpretentious, the unknown, he was "Papa Corot," and everywhere did the stalwart old man of seventy-five carry hope, good-cheer and a courage that never faltered.

Corot, like Whitman, had the happiness to have no history.

Corot used paint just as if no one had ever painted before, and Whitman wrote as if he were the first man who had ever expressed himself in verse—precedent stood for naught. Each had all the time there was; they were never in a hurry; they loafed and invited their souls; they loved all women so well that they never could make choice of one; both were ridiculed and hooted and misunderstood; recognition came to neither until they were about to depart; and yet in spite of the continual rejection of their work, and the stupidity that would not see, and the ribaldry of those who could not comprehend, they continued serenely on their way, unruffled, kind— making no apologies nor explanations—unresentful, with malice toward none, and charity for all.

The world is still divided as to whether Walt Whitman was simply a coarse and careless writer, without either skill, style or insight; or one with such a subtle, spiritual vision, such a penetration into the heart of things, that few comparatively can follow him.

During forty years of Corot's career the critics said, when they deigned to mention Corot at all, "There are two worlds, God's World and Corot's World." He was regarded as a harmless lunatic, who saw things differently from others, and so they indulged him, and at the Salon hung his pictures in the "Catacombs" with many a sly joke at his expense. The expression, "Corot Nature," is with us yet.

But now the idea has gradually gained ground that Camille Corot looked for beauty and found it—that he painted what he saw, and that he saw things that the average man, through incapacity, never sees at all. Science has taught us that there are sounds so subtle that our coarse senses can not recognize them, and there are thousands of tints, combinations and variations in color that the unaided or uneducated eye can not detect.

If Corot saw more than we, why denounce Corot? And so Corot has gradually and very slowly come into recognition as one who had power plus—it was we who were weak, we who were faulty, not he. The stones that were cast at him have been gathered up and cemented into a monument to his memory.

The father of Camille Corot was a peasant who drifted over to Paris to make his fortune. He was active, acute, intelligent and economical—and when a Frenchman is economical his economy is of a kind that makes the Connecticut brand look like extravagance.

This young man became a clerk in a drygoods-store that had a millinery attachment, as most French drygoods-stores have. He was precise, accurate, had a fair education, and always wore a white cravat. In the millinery department of this store was employed, among many others, a Swiss girl who had come up to Paris on her own account to get a knowledge of millinery and dressmaking. When this was gained she intended to go back to Switzerland, the land of liberty and Swiss cheese, and there live out her life in her native village making finery for the villagers for a consideration.

She did not go back to Switzerland, because she very shortly married the precise young drygoods-clerk who wore the white cravat.

The Swiss are the most competent people on this globe of ours, which is round like an orange and slightly flattened at the poles. There is less illiteracy, less pauperism, less drunkenness, more general intelligence, more freedom in Switzerland than in any other country on earth. This has been so for two hundred years: and the reason, some say, is that she has no standing army and no navy. She is surrounded by big nations that are so jealous of her that they will not allow each other to molest her. She is not big enough to fight them. Being too little to declare war, she makes a virtue of necessity and so just minds her own business. That is the only way an individual can succeed—mind your own business—and it is also the best policy with a nation.

The way the Swiss think things out with their heads and materialize them with their hands is very wonderful. In all the Swiss schools the pupils draw, sew, carve wood and make things. Pestalozzi was Swiss, and Froebel was more Swiss than German. Manual Training and the Kindergarten are Swiss ideas. All of our progress in the line of pedagogy that the years have brought has consisted in carrying Kindergarten Ideas into the Little Red Schoolhouse, and elsewhere. The world is debtor to the Swiss—the carmine of their ideas has tinted the whole thought-fabric of civilization.

The Swiss know how.

Skilled workmen from Switzerland are in demand everywhere.

That Swiss girl in the Paris shop was a skilled needlewoman, and the good taste and talent she showed in her work was a joy to her employers. There are hints that they tried to discourage her marriage with the clerk in the white cravat. What a loss to the art world if they had succeeded! But love is stronger than business ambition, and so the milliner married the young clerk, and they had a very modest little nest to which they flew when the day's work was done.

In a year a domestic emergency made it advisable for the young woman to stay at home, but she kept right along with her sewing. Some of the customers hunted her up and wanted her to do work for them.

When the stress of the little exigency was safely passed, the young mother found she could make more by working at home for special customers. A girl was hired to help her, then two—three.

The rooms downstairs were secured, and a show-window put in. This was at the corner of the Rue du Bac and the Pont Royal, within sight of the Louvre. It is an easy place to find, and you had better take a look at the site the next time you are in Paris—it is sacred soil.

Corot has told us much about his mother—a Frenchman is apt to regard his father simply as a necessary though often inconvenient appendage, possibly absorbing the idea from the maternal side of the house—but his mother is his solace, comforter and friend. The mother of Corot was intelligent, industrious, tactful; sturdy in body and strong in mind.

In due course of time she built up a paying business, bought the house in which they lived, and laid by a goodly dot for her son and two daughters. And all the time Corot pere wore the white cravat, a precise smile for customers and an austere look for his family. He held his old position as floorwalker and gave respectability to his good-wife's Millinery and Dressmaking Establishment.

The father's ambition for Camille was that he should become a model floorwalker, treading in the father's footsteps; and so, while yet a child, the boy was put to work in a drygoods-store, with the idea of discipline strong in mind.

And for this discipline, in after-years Corot was grateful. It gave him the habit of putting things away, keeping accurate accounts, systematizing his work; and throughout his forty years or more of artistic life, it was his proud boast that he reached his studio every morning at three minutes before eight.

Young Corot's mother had quite a little skill as a draftsman. In her business she drew designs for patterns, and if the prospective customer lacked imagination, she could draw a sketch of the garment as it would look when completed.

Savage tribes make pictures long before they acquire an alphabet; so do all children make pictures before they learn to read. The evolution of the child mirrors the evolution of the race. Camille made pictures just as all boys do, and his mother encouraged him in this, and supplied him copies.

When he was set to work in the drygoods-store he made sketches under the counter and often ornamented bundles with needless hieroglyphics. But these things did not necessarily mean that he was to be a great artist—thousands of drygoods-clerks have sketched and been drygoods- clerks to the end of their days. But good drygoods-clerks should not sketch too much or too well, else they will not rise in their career and some day have charge of a Department.

Camille Corot did not get along at haberdashery—his heart was not in it. He was not quite so bad as a certain budding, artistic genius I once knew, who clerked in a grocery-store, and when a woman came in and ordered a dozen eggs and a half-bushel of potatoes, the genius counted out a dozen potatoes, and sent the customer a half- bushel of eggs.

Then there was that absent-minded young drug-clerk who, when a stranger entered and inquired for the proprietor, answered, "He's out just at present, but we have something that is just as good."

Corot hadn't the ability to make folks think they needed something they did not want—they only got what they wanted, after much careful diplomacy and insistence. These things were a great cross to Corot pere, and the dulness of the boy made the good father grow old before his time—so the father alleged. Were the woes of parents written in books, the world would not be big enough to contain the books. Camille Corot was a failure—he was big, fat, lazy, and tantalizingly good-natured. He haunted the Louvre, and stood open- mouthed before the pictures of Claude Lorraine until the attendants requested him to move on. His mother knew something of art, and they used to discuss all the new pictures together. The father protested: he declared that the mother was encouraging the boy in his vacillation and dreaminess.

Camille lost his position. His father got him another place, and after a month they laid him off for two weeks, and then sent him a note not to come back. He hung around home, played the violin, and sang for his mother's sewing-girls while they worked. The girls all loved him—if the mother went out and left him in charge of the shop, he gave all hands a play-spell until it was time for Madame to return. His good nature was invincible. He laughed at the bonnets in the windows, slyly sketched the customers who came to try on the frivolities, and even made irrelevant remarks to his mother about the petite fortune she was deriving from catering to dead-serious nabobs who discussed flounces, bows, stays, and beribboned gewgaws as though they were Eternal Verities.

"Mamma is a sculptor who improves upon Nature," one day Camille said to the girls." If a woman hasn't a good form Madame Corot can supply her such amorous proportions that lovers will straightway fall at her feet." But such jocular remarks were never made to the father— in his presence Camille was subdued and suspiciously respectful. The father had "disciplined" him—but had done nothing else.

Camille had a companion in Achille Michallon, son of the sculptor, Claude Michallon. Young Michallon modeled in clay and painted fairly well, and it was he who, no doubt, fired the mind of young Corot to follow an artistic career, to which Corot the elder was very much opposed.

So matters drifted and Camille Corot, aged twenty-six, was a flat failure, just as he had been for ten years. He hadn't self-reliance enough to push out for himself, nor enough will to swing his parents into his way of thinking. He was as submissive as a child; and would not and could not do anything until he had gotten permission—thus much for discipline.

Finally, in desperation, his father said: "Camille, you are of an age when you should be at the head of a business; but since you refuse to avail yourself of your opportunities and become a merchant, why, then, I'll settle upon you the sum of three hundred dollars a year for life and you can follow your own inclinations. But depend upon it, you shall have no more than I have named. I am done—now go and do what you want."

The words are authentic, being taken down from Corot's own lips; and they sound singularly like that remark made to Alfred Tennyson by his grandfather, "Here is a guinea for your poem, and depend upon it, this is the first and last money you will ever receive for poetry."

Camille was so delighted to hear his father's decision that he burst into tears and embraced the austere and stern-faced parent in the white cravat.

Straightway he would begin his artistic career, and having so announced his intention to the sewing-girls in an impromptu operatic aria, he took easel and paints and went down on the towpath to paint his first outdoor picture.

Soon the girls came trooping after, in order to see Monsieur Camille at his work. One girl, Mademoiselle Rose, stayed longer than the rest. Corot told of the incident in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-eight—a lapse of thirty years—and added: "I have not married—Mademoiselle Rose has not married—she is alive yet, and only last week was here to see me. Ah! what changes have taken place—I have that first picture I painted yet—it is the same picture and still shows the hour and the season, but Mademoiselle Rose and I, where are we?"

Turner and Corot trace back to the same artistic ancestor. It was Claude who first fired the heart of the barber's boy, and it was Claude who diluted the zeal of Camille Corot for ribbons and haberdashery.

Turner stipulated in his will that a certain picture of his should hang on the walls of the National Gallery by the side of a "Claude Lorraine"; and today in the Louvre you can see, side by side, a "Corot" and a "Claude." These men are strangely akin; yet, so far as I know, Corot never heard of Turner. However, he was powerfully influenced by Constable, the English painter, who was of the same age as Turner, and for a time, his one bitter rival.

Claude had been dead a hundred years before Constable, Turner or Corot was born. But time is an illusion; all souls are of one age, and in spirit these men were contemporaries and brothers. Claude, Corot and Turner never married—they were wedded to art. Constable ripened fast; he got his reward of golden guineas, and society caught him in its silken mesh. Success came faster than he was able to endure it, and he fell a victim to fatty degeneration of the cerebrum, and died of an acute attack of self-complacency.

It was about the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-two that Constable gave an exhibition of his work in Paris—a somewhat daring thing for an Englishman to do. Paris had then, and has yet, about the same estimate of English art that the English have now of ours—although it is quite in order to explain in parentheses that three Americans, Whistler, Sargent and Abbey, have recently called a halt on English ribaldry as applied to American artists.

But John Constable's exhibit in Paris met with favor—the work was singularly like the work of Claude Lorraine, the critics said. And it was, for Constable had copied Claude conscientiously. Corot saw the Englishman's pictures, realized that they were just such pictures as he would like to paint, and so fell down and worshiped them. For a year he dropped Claude and painted just like Constable.

There was a time when Turner and Constable painted just alike, for they had the same master; but there came a day when Turner shoved out from shore, and no man since has been able to follow him.

And no one can copy Corot. The work that he did after he attained freedom and swung away from Claude and Constable has an illusive, intangible, subtle and spiritual quality that no imitator can ever catch on his canvas. Corot could not even copy his own pictures—his work is born of the spirit. His effects are something beyond skill of hand, something beyond mere knowledge of technique. You can copy a Claude and you can copy a Constable, for the pictures have well- defined outline and the forms are tangible. Claude was the first painter who showed the shimmering sunlight on the leaves, the upturned foliage of the silver poplar, the yellow willows bending beneath the breeze, the sweep of the clouds across the sky, the play of the waves across the seashore, the glistening dewdrops on the grass, the soft stealing mists of twilight.

Constable did all this, too, and he did it as well as Claude, but no better. He never got beyond the stage of microscopic portrayal; if he painted a dewdrop he painted it, and his blades of grass, swaying lily-stems, and spider-webs are the genuine articles.

Corot painted in this minute way for many years, but gradually he evolved a daring quality and gave us the effect of dewdrops, the spider-threads, the foliage, the tall lilies, without painting them at all—he gives you the feeling, that is all, stirs the imagination until the beholder, if his heart be in tune, sees things that only the spiritual eye beholds.

The pale, silvery tones of Corot, the shadowy boundaries that separate the visible from the invisible, can never be imitated without the Master's penetration into the heart of Nature. He knew things he could never explain, and he held secrets he could not impart. Before his pictures we can only stand silent—he disarms criticism and strikes the quibbler dumb. Before a Corot you had better give way, and let its beauty caress your soul. His colors are thin and very simple—there is no challenge in his work, as there is in the work of Turner. Greens and grays predominate, and the plain drab tones are blithe, airy, gracious, graceful and piquant as a beautiful young Quaker woman clothed in the garb of simplicity and humility—but a woman still. Corot coquettes with color—with pale lilac, silver gray, and diaphanous green. He poetizes everything he touches—quiet ponds, clumps of bushes, whitewashed cottages, simple swards, yellow cows, blowsy peasants, woodland openings, stretching meadows and winding streams—they are all full of divine suggestion and joyous expectancy. Something is just going to happen—somebody is coming, some one we love—you can almost detect a faint perfume, long remembered, never to be forgotten. A Corot is a tryst with all that you most admire and love best—it speaks of youth, joyous, hopeful, expectant youth. The flavor is Grecian, and if the Greeks had left us any paintings they would all have been just like Corot's.

The bubbling, boyish good-cheer that Corot possessed is well shown in a letter he once wrote to Stevens Graham. This letter was written, without doubt, in that fine intoxication which comes after work well done; and no greater joy ever comes to a mortal in life than this.

George Moore tells somewhere of catching Corot in one of these moods of rapture: the Master was standing alone on a log in the woods, like a dancing faun, leading an imaginary orchestra with silent but tremendous gusto. At other times, when Corot captured certain effects in a picture, he would rush across the fields to where there was a peasant plowing, and seizing the astonished man, would lead him over and stand him before the canvas crying: "Look at that! Ah, now, look at that! What did I tell you! You thought I never could catch it—Oho, aha, ohe, tralala, la, la, la, loo!"

This willingness to let the unrestrained spirit romp was strong in Corot—and it is to be recommended. How much finer it is to go out into the woods and lift up your voice in song, and be a child, than to fight inclination and waste good God-given energy endeavoring to be proper—whatever that may be!

Corot never wrote anything finer than that letter to his friend Graham, and, like all really good things, it was written with no weather-eye on futurity. The thought that it might be published never came to him, for if it had, he would probably have produced something not worth publishing. It was scribbled off with a pencil, hot from the heart, out of doors, immediately after having done a particularly choice bit of work. Every one who writes of Corot quotes this letter, and there are various translations of it. It can not be translated literally, because the language in which it was written is effervescent, flashing, in motion like a cascade. It defies all grammar, forgets rhetoric, and simply makes you feel. I have just as good a right to translate this letter as anybody, and while I will add nothing that the spirit of the text does not justify, I will omit a few things, and follow my own taste in the matter of paragraphing.

So here is the letter:

A landscapist's day is divine. You are jealous of the moments, and so are up at three o'clock—long before the sun sets you the example.

You go out into the silence and sit under a tree, and watch and watch and wait and wait.

It is very dark—the nightingales have gone to bed, all the mysterious noises of night's forenoon have ceased—the crickets are asleep, the tree-toad has found a nest—even the stars have slunk away.

You wait.

There is scarcely anything to be seen at first—only dark, spectral shapes that stand out against the blue-black of the sky.

Nature is behind a veil, upon which some masses of form are vaguely sketched. The damp, sweet smell of the incense of Spring is in the air—you breathe deeply—a sense of religious emotion sweeps over you—you close your eyes an instant in a prayer of thankfulness that you are alive.

You do not keep your eyes closed long, though—something is about to happen—you grow expectant, you wait, you listen, you hold your breath—everything trembles with a delight that is half-pain, under the invigorating caress of the coming day.

You breathe fast, and then you hold your breath and listen.

You wait.

You peer.

You listen.

Bing! A ray of pale yellow light shoots from horizon to zenith. The dawn does not come all at once: it steals upon you by leaps and subtle strides like deploying pickets.

Bing! Another ray, and the first one is suffusing itself across an arc of the purple sky.

Bing, Bing! The east is all aglow.

The little flowers at your feet are waking in joyful mood.

The chirrup of birds is heard. How they do sing! When did they begin? You forgot them in watching the rays of light.

The flowers are each one drinking its drop of quivering dew.

The leaves feel the cool breath of the morning, and are moving to and fro in the invigorating air.

The flowers are saying their morning prayers, accompanied by the matin-song of the birds.

Amoretti, with gauzy wings, are perching on the tall blades of grass that spring from the meadows, and the tall stems of the poppies and field-lilies are swaying, swaying, swaying a minuet motion fanned by the kiss of the gentle breeze.

Oh, how beautiful it all is! How good God is to send it! How beautiful! how beautiful!

But merciful easel! I am forgetting to paint—this exhibition is for me, and I'm failing to improve it. My palette—the brushes—there! there!

We can see nothing—but you feel the landscape is there—quick now, a cottage away over yonder is pushing out of the white mist. To thine easel—go!

Oh! it's all there behind the translucent gauze—I know it—I know it—I know it!

Now the white mist lifts like a curtain—it rises and rises and rises.

Bam! the sun is risen.

I see the river, like a stretch of silver ribbon; it weaves in and out and stretches away, away, away.

The masses of the trees, of the meads, the meadows—the poplars, the leaning willows, are all revealed by the mist that is reeling and rolling up the hillside.

I paint and I paint and I paint, and I sing and I sing and I paint!

We can see now all we guessed before.

Bam, Bam! The sun is just above the horizon—a great golden ball held in place by spider-threads.

I can see the lace made by the spiders—it sparkles with the drops of dew.

I paint and I paint and I sing and I paint.

Oh, would I were Joshua—I would command the sun to stand still.

And if it should, I would be sorry, for nothing ever did stand still, except a bad picture. A good picture is full of motion. Clouds that stand still are not clouds—motion, activity, life, yes, life is what we want—life!

Bam! A peasant comes out of the cottage and is coming to the meadow.

Ding, ding, ding! There comes a flock of sheep led by a bellwether. Wait there a minute, please, sheepy-sheepy, and a great man will paint you.

All right then, don't wait. I didn't want to paint you anyway

Bam! All things break into glistening—ten thousand diamonds strew the grasses, the lilies and the tall stalks of swaying poppies. Diamonds on the cobwebs—diamonds everywhere. Glistening, dancing, glittering light—floods of light—pale, wistful, loving light: caressing, blushing, touching, beseeching, grateful light. Oh, adorable light! The light of morning that comes to show you things— and I paint and I paint and I paint.

Oh, the beautiful red cow that plunges into the wet grass up to her dewlaps! I will paint her. There she is—there!

Here is Simon, my peasant friend, looking over my shoulder.

"Oho, Simon, what do you think of that?"

"Very fine," says Simon, "very fine!"

"You see what it is meant for, Simon?"

"Me? Yes, I should say I do—it is a big red rock."

"No, no, Simon, that is a cow."

"Well, how should I know unless you tell me," answers Simon.

I paint and I paint and I paint.

Boom! Boom! The sun is getting clear above the treetops.

It is growing hot.

The flowers droop.

The birds are silent.

We can see too much now—there is nothing in it. Art is a matter of soul. Things you see and know all about are not worth painting—only the intangible is splendid.

Let's go home. We will dine, and sleep, and dream. That's it—I'll dream of the morning that would not tarry—I'll dream my picture out, and then I'll get up and smoke, and complete it, possibly—who knows!

Let's go home.

* * * * *

Bam! Bam! It is evening now—the sun is setting. I didn't know the close of the day could be so beautiful—I thought the morning was the time.

But it is not just right—the sun is setting in an explosion of yellow, of orange, of rouge-feu, of cherry, of purple.

Ah! it is pretentious, vulgar. Nature wants me to admire her—I will not. I'll wait—the sylphs of the evening will soon come and sprinkle the thirsty flowers with their vapors of dew.

I like sylphs—I'll wait.

Boom! The sun sinks out of sight, and leaves behind a tinge of purple, of modest gray touched with topaz—ah! that is better. I paint and I paint and I paint.

Oh, Good Lord, how beautiful it is—how beautiful! The sun has disappeared and left behind a soft, luminous, gauzy tint of lemon— lemons half-ripe. The light melts and blends into the blue of the night.

How beautiful! I must catch that—even now it fades—but I have it: tones of deepening green, pallid turquoise, infinitely fine, delicate, fluid and ethereal.

Night draws on. The dark waters reflect the mysteries of the sky— the landscape fades, vanishes, disappears—we can not see it now, we only feel it is there.

But that is enough for one day—Nature is going to sleep, and so will we, soon. Let us just sit silent a space and enjoy the stillness.

The rising breezes are sighing through the foliage, and the birds, choristers of the flowers, are singing their vesper-songs—calling, some of them, plaintively for their lost mates.

Bing! A star pricks its portrait in the pond.

All around now is darkness and gloom—the crickets have taken up the song where the birds left off.

The little lake is sparkling, a regular ant-heap of twinkling stars.

Reflected things are best—the waters are only to reflect the sky— Nature's looking-glass.

The sun has gone to rest; the day is done. But the Sun of Art has arisen, and my picture is complete.

Let us go home.

The Barbizon School—which, by the way, was never a school, and if it exists now is not at Barbizon—was made up of five men: Corot, Millet, Rousseau, Diaz and Daubigny.

Corot saw it first—this straggling little village of Barbizon, nestling there at the foot of the Forest of Fontainebleau, thirty- five miles southeast of Paris. This was about the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty. There was no market then for Corot's wares, and the artist would have doubted the sanity of any one who might have wanted to buy. His income was one dollar a day—and this was enough. If he wanted to go anywhere, he walked; and so he walked into Barbizon one day, his pack on his back, and found there a little inn, so quaint and simple that he stayed two days.

The landlord quite liked the big, jolly stranger. Hanging upon his painting outfit was a mandolin, a harmonica, a guitar and two or three other small musical instruments of nondescript pedigree. The painter made music for the village, and on invitation painted a sketch on the tavern-wall to pay for his board. And this sketch is there even to this day, and is as plain to be seen as the splash of ink on the wall at Eisenach where Martin Luther threw the ink-bottle at the devil.

When Corot went back to Paris he showed sketches of Barbizon and told of the little snuggery, where life was so simple and cheap.

Soon Rousseau and Diaz went down to Barbizon for a week's stay— later came Daubigny.

In the course of a few years Barbizon grew to be a kind of excursion point for artistic and ragged Bohemians, most of whom have done their work, and their little life is now rounded with a sleep.

Rousseau, Diaz and Daubigny, all younger men than Corot, made comfortable fortunes long before Corot got the speaker's eye; and when at last recognition came to him, not the least of their claim to greatness was that they had worked with him.

It was not until Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine that Jean Francois Millet with his goodly brood was let down from the stage at Barbizon, to work there for twenty-six years, and give himself and the place immortality. For when we talk of the Barbizon School, we have the low tones of "The Fagot-Gatherer" in mind—the browns, the russets and the deep, dark yellows fading off into the gloom of dying day.

And only a few miles away, clinging to the hillside, is By, where lived Rosa Bonheur—too busy to care for Barbizon, or if she thought of the "Barbizon School" it was with a fine contempt, which the "School" returned with usurious interest.

At the Barbizon Inn the Bohemians used to sing songs about the Bonheur breeches, and "the Lady who keeps a Zoo." The offense of Rosa Bonheur was that she minded her own business, and sold the "Horse Fair" for more money than the entire Barbizon School had ever earned in its lifetime.

Only two names loom large out of Barbizon. Daubigny, Diaz and Rousseau are great painters, and they each have disciples and imitators who paint as well as they; but Corot and Millet stand out separate and alone, incomprehensible and unrivaled.

And yet were ever two artists more unlike! Just compare "The Dancing Sylphs" and "The Gleaners." The theme of all Millet's work is, "Man goeth forth to his labors unto the evening." Toil, hardship, heroic endurance, plodding monotony, burdens grievous to be borne—these things cover the canvases of Millet. All of his deep sincerity, his abiding melancholy, his rugged nobility are there; for every man who works in freedom simply reproduces himself. That is what true work is—self-expression, self-revelation. The style of Millet is so strongly marked, so deeply etched, that no man dare imitate it. It is covered by a perpetual copyright, signed and sealed with the life's blood of the artist. Then comes Corot the joyous, Corot the careless, Corot who had no troubles, no sorrows, no grievances, and not an enemy that he recognized as such. He even loved Rosa Bonheur, or would, he once said, "If she would only chain up her dog, and wear woman's clothes!" Corot, singing at his work, unless he was smoking, and if he was smoking, removing his pipe only to lift up his voice in song: Corot, painting and singing—"Ah ha—tra la la. Now I 'll paint a little boy—oho, oho, tra lala la loo—lal loo— oho—what a nice little boy—and here comes a cow; hold that, bossy —in you go for art's dear sake—tra la la la, la loo!"

Look at a Corot closely and listen, and you can always hear the echo of the pipes o' Pan. Lovers sit on the grassy banks, children roll among the leaves, sylphs dance in every open, and out from between the branches lightly steps Orpheus, harp in hand, to greet the morn. Never is there a shadow of care in a Corot—all is mellow with love, ripe with the rich gift of life, full of prayer and praise just for the rapture of drinking in the day—grateful for calm, sweet rest and eventide.

Corot, eighteen years the senior of Millet, was the first to welcome the whipped-out artist to Barbizon. With him Corot divided his scanty store; he sang and played his guitar at the Millet hearthstone when he had nothing but himself to give; and when, in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, Millet felt the chill night of death settling down upon him, and the fear that want would come to his loved ones haunted his dreams, Corot assured him by settling upon the family the sum of one thousand francs a year, until the youngest child should become of age, and during Madame Millet's life.

So died Jean Francois Millet.

In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine "The Angelus" was bought by an American Syndicate for five hundred eighty thousand francs. In Eighteen Hundred Ninety it was bought back by agents of the French Government for seven hundred fifty thousand francs, and now has found a final resting-place in the Louvre.

Within a few months after the death of Millet, Corot, too, passed away.

Corot is a remarkable example of a soul ripening slowly. His skill was not at its highest until he was seventy-one years of age. He then had eight years of life and work left, and he continued even to the end. In his art there was no decline.

It can not be said that he received due recognition until he was approaching his seventy-fifth year, for it was then, for the first time, that the world of buyers besieged his door. The few who had bought before were usually friends who had purchased with the amiable idea of helping a worthy man.

During the last few years of Corot's life, his income was over fifty thousand francs a year—"more than I received for pictures during my whole career," he once said. And then he shed tears at parting with the treasures that had been for so long his close companions.

"You see, I am a collector," he used to say, "but being poor, I have to paint all my pictures myself—they are not for sale."

And probably he would have kept his collection unbroken were it not that he wanted the money so much to give away.

Of the painters classed in the Barbizon School, it is probable that Corot will live longest, and will continue to occupy the highest position. His art is more individual than Rousseau's, more poetic than that of Daubigny, and in every sense more beautiful than that of Millet. When Camille Corot passed out, on the Twenty-second of February, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, he was the best-loved man in Paris. Five thousand art-students wore crape on their arms for a year in memory of "Papa Corot," a man who did his work joyously, lived long, and to the end carried in his heart the perfume of the morning, and the beneficent beauty of the sunrise.



CORREGGIO

What genius disclosed all these wonders to thee? All the fair images in the world seem to have sprung forward to meet thee, and to throw themselves lovingly into thy arms. How joyous was the gathering when smiling angels held thy palette, and sublime spirits stood before thy inward vision in all their splendor as models! Let no one think he has seen Italy, let no one think he has learnt the lofty secrets of art, until he has seen thee and thy Cathedral at Parma, O Correggio! —Ludwig Tieck



There is no moment that comes to mortals so charged with peace and precious joy as the moment of reconciliation. If the angels ever attend us, they are surely present then. The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstacy that well might arouse the envy of the gods. How well the theologians have understood this! Very often, no doubt, their psychology has been more experimental than scientific—but it is effective. They plunge the candidate into a gloom of horror, guilt and despair; and then when he is thoroughly prostrated—submerged—they lift him out and up into the light, and the thought of reconciliation possesses him.

He has made peace with his Maker!

That is to say, he has made peace with himself—peace with his fellowmen. He is intent on reparation; he wishes to forgive every one. He sings, he dances, he leaps into the air, clasps his hands in joy, embraces those nearest him, and calls aloud, "Glory to God! Glory to God!" It is the moment of reconciliation. Yet there is a finer temperament than that of the "new convert," and his moment of joy is one of silence—sacred silence.

In the Parma Gallery is the painting entitled, "The Day," the masterpiece of Correggio. The picture shows the Madonna, Saint Jerome, Saint John and the Christ-child. A second woman is shown in the picture. This woman is usually referred to as Magdalene, and to me she is the most important figure in it. She may lack a little of the ethereal beauty of the Madonna, but the humanness of the pose, the tenderness and subtle joy of it, shows you that she is a woman indeed, a woman the artist loved—he wanted to paint her picture, and Saint Jerome, the Madonna and the Christ-child are only excuses.

John Ruskin, good and great, but with prejudices that matched his genius, declared this picture "immoral in its suggestiveness." It is so splendidly, superbly human that he could not appreciate it. Yet this figure of which he complains is draped from neck to ankle—the bare feet are shown—but the attitude is sweetly, tenderly modest. The woman, half-reclining, leans her face over and allows her cheek, very gently, to press against that of the Christ-child. Absolute relaxation is shown, perfect trust—no tension, no anxiety, no passion—only a stillness and rest, a gratitude and subdued peace that are beyond speech. The woman is so happy that she can not speak, so full of joy that she dare not express it, and a barely perceptible tear-stain upon her cheek suggests that this peace has not always been. She has found her Savior—she is His and He is hers.

It is the moment of reconciliation.

The Renaissance came as a great burst of divine light, after a thousand years of lurid night. The iron heel of Imperial Rome had ground individuality into the mire. Unceasing war, endless bloodshed, slavery without limit, and rampant bestiality had stalked back and forth across Europe. Insanity, uncertainty, drudgery and crouching want were the portion of the many. In such a soil neither art, literature nor religion can prosper.

But now the Church had turned her face against disorder, and was offering her rewards for excellence and beauty. Gradually there came a feeling of safety—something approaching security. Throughout Italy, beautiful, stately churches were being built; in all the little principalities, palaces were erected; architecture became a science. The churches and palaces were decorated with pictures, statues filled the niches, memorials to great ones gone were erected in the public squares. It was a time of reconciliation—peace was more popular than war—and where men did go to war, they always apologized for it by explaining that they fought simply to obtain peace.

Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo and Botticelli were doing their splendid work—work palpitating with the joy of life, and yet upon it was the tinge of sorrow, the scars of battles fought, the tear- stains that told of troubles gone. Yet the general atmosphere was one of blitheness, joyous life and gratitude for existence. Men seemed to have gotten rid of a great burden; they stood erect, they breathed deeply, and looking around them, were surprised to perceive that life was really beautiful, and God was good.

In such an attitude of mind they reached out friendly hands toward each other. Poets sang; musicians played; painters painted, and sculptors carved. Universities sprang into being—schools were everywhere. The gloom was dispelled even from the monasteries. The monks ate three meals a day—sometimes four or five. They went a- visiting. Wine flowed, and music was heard where music was never heard before. Instead of the solemn processional, there were Barnabee steps seen on stone floors—steps that looked like ecclesiastical fandango. The rope girdles were let out a trifle, flagellations ceased, vigils relaxed, and in many instances the coarse horsehair garments were replaced with soft, flowing robes, tied with red, blue or yellow sashes of silk and satin. The earth was beautiful, men were kind, women were gracious, God was good, and His children should be happy—these were the things preached from many pulpits.

Paganism had got grafted on to Christianity, and the only branches that were bearing fruit were the pagan branches. The old spirit of Greece had come back, romping, laughing in the glorious Italian sunshine. Everything had an Attic flavor. The sky was never so blue, the yellow moonlight never before cast such soft, mysterious shadows, the air was full of perfume, and you had but to stop and listen any time and anywhere to hear the pipes o' Pan.

When Time turned the corner into the Sixteenth Century, the tide of the Renaissance was at its full. The mortification of the monasteries, as we have seen, had given place to a spirit of feasting—good things were for use. The thought was contagious, and although the Paulian idea of women keeping silence in all due subjection has ever been a favorite one with masculine man, yet the fact is that in the matter of manners and morals men and women are never far apart—there is a constant transference of thought, feeling and action. I do not know why this is. I merely know that it is so. Some have counted sex a mistake on the part of God; but the safer view is for us to conclude that whatever is, is good; some things are better than others, but all are good. That is what they thought during the Renaissance. So convent life lost its austerity, and as the Council of Trent had not yet issued its stern orders commanding asceticism, prayers were occasionally offered accompanied by syncopated music.

The blooming daughters of great houses were consigned to convents on slight excuse. "To a nunnery go, and quickly, too," was an order often given and followed with alacrity. Married women, worn with many cares, often went into "retreat"; girls tired of society's whirl; those wrung with hopeless passion; unmanageable wives; all who had fed on the husks of satiety; those who had incurred the displeasure of parents or kinsmen, or were deserted, forlorn and undone, all these found rest in the convents—provided they had the money to pay. Those without money or influential friends simply labored as servants and scullions. Rich women contracted the "Convent Habit"; this was about the same thing as our present dalliance known as the "Sanitarium Bacillus"—which only those with a goodly bank-balance can afford to indulge. The poor, then as now, had a sufficient panacea for trouble: they kept their nerves beneath their clothes by work; they had to grin and bear it—at least they had to bear it.

In almost every town that lined the great Emilian Highway, that splendid road laid out by the Consul Marcus Emilius, 83 B. C., from Rimini and Piacenza, there were convents of high and low degree— some fashionable, some plain, and some veritable palaces, rich in art and full of all that makes for luxury. These convents were at once a prison, a hospital, a sanitarium, a workshop, a school and a religious retreat. The day was divided up into periods for devotion, work and recreation, and the discipline was on a sliding scale matching the mood of the Abbess in charge, all modified by the prevailing spirit of the inmates. But the thought that life was good was rife, and this thought got over every convent-wall, stole through the garden-walks, crept softly in at every grated window, and filled each suppliant's cell with its sweet, amorous presence.

Yes, life is good, God is good! He wants His children to be happy! The white clouds chase each other across the blue dome of heaven, the birds in the azaleas and in the orange-trees twitter, build nests and play hide-and-seek the livelong day. The balmy air is flavored with health, healing and good-cheer.

Life in a convent had many advantages and benefits. Women were taught to sew and work miracles with the needle; they made lace, illumined missals, wove tapestries, tended the flowers, read from books, listened to lectures, and spent certain hours in silence and meditation. To a great degree the convents were founded on science and a just knowledge of human needs. There were "orders" and degrees that fitted every temperament and condition.

But the humble garb of a nun never yet changed the woman's heart that beats beneath—she is a woman still.

Every night could be heard the tinkle of guitars beneath bedroom- windows, notes were passed up on forked sticks, and missives freshly kissed by warm lips were dropped down through lattices; secret messengers came with letters, and now and again rope ladders were in demand; while not far away, there were always priests who did a thriving business in the specialty of Gretna Green.

Every sanitarium, every great hotel, every public institution—every family, I was going to say—has two lives: the placid moving life that the public knows, and the throbbing, pulsing life of plot and counterplot—the life that goes on beneath the surface. It is the same with the human body—how bright and calm the eye, how smooth and soft the skin, how warm and beautiful this rose-mesh of flesh! But beneath there is a seething struggle between the forces of life and the disintegration—and eventually nothing succeeds but failure.

Every convent was a hotbed of gossip, jealousy, hate and seething strife; and now and again there came a miniature explosion that the outside world heard and translated with emendations to suit.

Rivalry was rife, competition lined the corridors, and discontent sat glum or rustled uneasily in each stone cell. Some of the inmates brought pictures, busts and ornaments to embellish their rooms. Friends from the outside world sent presents; the cavalier who played the guitar beneath the window varied his entertainment by gifts; flowers filled the beautiful vases, and these blossoms were replaced ere they withered, so as to show that true love never dies.

Monks from neighboring monasteries preached sermons or gave lectures; skilled musicians came, and sang or played the organ; noblemen visited the place to examine the works of art, or to see fair maids on business, or consult the Abbess on matters spiritual. Often these visitors were pressed to remain, and then receptions were held and modest fetes given and banquets tendered. At intervals there were fairs, when the products made by the marriage of the hand and brain of the fair workers were exhibited and sold.

So life, though in a convent, was life, and even death and disintegration are forms of life—and all life is good.

The Donna Giovanni Piacenza was appointed Abbess of San Paola Convent, Parma, in Fifteen Hundred Seven. The Abbess was the daughter of the nobleman Marco. Donna Giovanni was a woman of marked mental ability; she had a genius for management; a wise sense of diplomacy; and withal was an artist by nature and instinct.

The Convent of San Paola was one of the richest and most popular in the Emilia.

The man to whose influence the Abbess owed most in securing her the appointment was the Cavaliere Scipione, a lawyer and man of affairs, married to the sister of the Abbess.

As a token of esteem and by way of sisterly reciprocity, the Abbess soon after her appointment called the Cavaliere Scipione to the position of Legal Adviser and Custodian of the Convent Funds. Before this the business of the institution had been looked after by the Garimberti family; and the Garimberti now refusing to relinquish their office, Scipione took affairs into his own hands and ran the chief offender through with his sword. Scipione found refuge in the Convent, and the officers of the law hammered on the gates for admission, and hammered in vain.

Parma was split into two factions—those who favored the Abbess Giovanni and those who opposed her.

Once at midnight the gates were broken down and the place searched, for hiding cavaliers, by the Governor of the city and his cohorts, to the great consternation of the nuns.

But time is the great healer, and hate left alone is shortlived, and dies a natural death. The Abbess was wise in her management, and with the advice and assistance of Scipione, the place prospered. Visitors came, delegations passed that way, great prelates gave their blessing, and the citizens of Parma became proud of the Convent of San Paola.

Some of the nuns were rich in their own right, and some of these had their rooms frescoed by local artists to suit their fancies. Strictly religious pictures were not much in vogue with the inmates —they got their religion at the chapel. Mythology and the things that symbolized life and love were the fashion. On one door was a flaming heart pierced by an arrow, and beneath in Italian was the motto, "Love while you may." Other mottoes about the place were, "Eat, drink and be merry"; "Laugh and be glad." These mottoes revealed the prevailing spirit.

Some of the staid citizens of Parma sent petitions to Pope Julius demanding that the decree of strict cloistration be enforced against the nuns. But Julius sort of reveled in life himself, and the art spirit shown by the Abbess was quite to his liking. Later, Leo the Tenth was importuned to curb the festive spirit of the place, but he shelved the matter by sending along a fatherly letter of advice and counsel.

About this time we find the Abbess and her Legal Adviser planning a scheme of decoration that should win the admiration or envy—or both—of every art-lover in the Emilia. The young man, Antonio Allegri, from Correggio should do the work. They had met him at the house of Veronica Gambara, and they knew that any one Veronica recommended must be worthy of confidence. Veronica said the youth had sublime talent—it must be so. His name, Allegri, meant joy, and his work was charged with all his name implied. He was sent for, and he came—walking the forty miles from Correggio to Parma with his painter's kit on his back.

He was short of stature, smooth-faced and looked like a good-natured country bumpkin in his peasant garb, all decorated with dust. He was modest, half-shy, and the nuns who peered at him from behind the arras as he walked down the hallway of the Convent caused his countenance to run the chromatic scale.

He was sorry he came, and if he could have gotten away without disgrace he surely would have started straight back for Correggio. He had never been so far away from home before, and although he did not know it he was never to get farther away in his life. Venice and Titian were to the east a hundred miles; Milan and Leonardo were to the north about the same distance; Florence and Michelangelo were south ninety miles; Rome and Raphael were one hundred sixty miles beyond; and he was never to see any of these. But the boy shed no tears over that; it is quite possible that he never heard of any of these names just mentioned, save that of Leonardo. None loomed large as they do now—there were painters everywhere, just as Boston Common is full of poets. Veronica Gambara had told him of Leonardo— we know that—and described in glowing words and with an enthusiasm that was contagious how the chief marks of Leonardo's wonderful style lay in the way he painted hands, hair and eyes. The Leonardo hands were delicate, long of finger, expressive and full of life; the hair was wavy, fluffy, sun-glossed, and it seemed as if you could stroke it, and it would give off magnetic sparks; but Leonardo's best feature was the eye—the large, full-orbed eye that looked down so that you really never saw the eye, only the lid, and the long lashes upon which a tear might glisten. Antonio listened to Veronica with open mouth, drinking it all in, and then he sighed and said, "I am a painter, too." He set to work, fired with the thought of doing what Leonardo had done—hands, hair and eyes—beautiful hands, beautiful hair, beautiful eyes! Then these things he worked upon, only he never placed the glistening tear upon the long lash, because there were no tears upon his own lashes. He had never known sorrow, trouble, disappointment or defeat.

The specialty of Allegri was "putti"—tumbling, tumultuous, tricksy putti. These cherubs symboled the joy of life, and when Allegri wished to sign his name, he drew a cherub. He had come up out of a family that had little and expected nothing. Then he needed so little—his wants were few. If he went away from home on little journeys, he stopped with peasants along the way and made merry with the children and outlined a chubby cherub on the cottage-wall, to the delight of everybody; and in the morning was sent on his way with blessings, Godspeeds, and urgent invitations to come again. Smiles and good-cheer, a little music and the ability to do things, when accompanied by a becoming modesty, are current coin the round world over. Tired earth is quite willing to pay for being amused.

The Abbess Giovanni showed Antonio about the Convent, and he saw what had already been done. He was appreciative, but talked little. The Abbess liked the youth. He suggested possibilities—he might really become the great painter that the enthusiastic Veronica prophesied he would some day be.

The Abbess gave up one of her own rooms for his accommodation, brought him water for a bath, and at supper sat him at the table at her own right hand.

"And about the frescos?" asked the Abbess.

"Yes, the frescos—your room shall be done first. I will begin the work in the morning," replied Antonio. The confidence of the youth made the Abbess smile.

Many of our finest flowers are merely transplanted weeds. Transplantation often works wonders in men. When Fate lifted Antonio Allegri out of the little village of Correggio and set him down in the city of Parma, a great change came over him. The wealth, beauty and freer atmosphere of the place caused the tendrils of his imagination to reach out into a richer soil, and the result was such blossoms of beauty, so gorgeous in form and color, that men have not yet ceased to marvel.

The Convent of San Paola is a sacred shrine for art-lovers—they come from the round world over, just to see the ceiling in that one room—the room of the Abbess Giovanni, where Antonio Allegri, the young man from Correggio, first placed his scaffolds in Parma.

The village of Correggio is quite off the beaten track of travel. You will have to look five times on the map before you can find it. It is now only a village, and in the year Fourteen Hundred Ninety- four, when Antonio Allegri was born and Cristoforo Colombo, the Genoese, was discovering continents, it was little better than a hamlet. It had a church, a convent, a palace where dwelt the Corregghesi—the Lords of Correggio—and stretching around the square, where stood the church, were long, low, stone cottages, whitewashed, with trellises of climbing flowers. Back of these cottages were little gardens where the peas, lentils, leeks and parsley laughed a harvest. There were flowers, flowers everywhere— none was too poor to have flowers. Flowers are a strictly sex product and symbol the joy of life; and where there are no flowers, there is little love. Lovers give flowers—and they are enough—and if you do not love flowers, they will refuse to blossom for you. "If I had but two loaves of bread, I'd sell one of them and buy white hyacinths to feed my soul"—that was said by a man who loved this world, no less than the next. Do not defame this world—she is the mother that feeds you, and she supplies you not only bread, but white hyacinths to feed your soul.

On market-day in every Italian town four hundred years ago, just as now, the country women brought big baskets of vegetables and also baskets of flowers. And you will see in those markets, if you observe, that the people who buy vegetables usually buy sprays of mignonette, bunches of violets, roses upon which the dew yet sparkles, or white hyacinths. Loaves alone are not quite enough—we want also the bread of life, and the bread of life is love, and didn't I say that flowers symbol love?

And I have noted this, in those old markets: often the pile of flowers that repose by the basket of fruit or vegetables is to give away to the customers as tokens of good-will. I remember visiting the market at Parma one day and buying some cherries, and the old woman who took my money picked up a little spray of hyacinth and pinned it to my coat, quite as a matter of course. The next day I went back and bought figs, and got a big moss-rose as a premium. The peculiar brand of Italian that I spoke was unintelligible to the old woman, and I am very sure that I could not understand her, yet the white hyacinths and the moss-rose made all plain. That was five years ago, but if I should go back to Parma tomorrow, I would go straight to the Market-Place, and I know that my old friend would reach out a brown calloused hand to give me welcome, and the choicest rose in her basket would be mine—the heart understands.

That spirit of mutual giving was the true spirit of the Renaissance, and in the forepart of the Sixteenth Century it was at its fullest flower. Men gave the beauty that was in them, and Vasari tells of how at Correggio the peasants, who had nothing else to give, each Sunday brought flowers and piled them high at the feet of the Virgin.

There were painters and sculptors at the village of Correggio then; great men in their day, no doubt, but lost now to us in the maze of years. And there was, too, a little court of beauty and learning, presided over by Veronica Gambara. Veronica was a lover of art and literature, and a poet of no mean quality. Antonio Allegri, the son of the village baker, was a welcome visitor at her house. The boy used to help the decorators at the church, and had picked up a little knowledge of art. That is all you want—an entrance into the Kingdom of Art, and all these things shall be added unto you. Veronica appreciated the boy because he appreciated art, and great lady that she was, she appreciated him because he appreciated her. Nothing so warms the cockles of a teacher's heart as appreciation in a pupil. The intellect of the village swung around Veronica Gambara. Visitors of note used to come from Bologna and Ferrara just to hear Veronica read her poems, and to talk over together the things they all loved. At these conferences Antonio was often present. He was eighteen, perhaps, when his sketches were first shown at Veronica's little court of art and letters. He had taken lessons from the local painters, and visiting artists gave him the benefit of advice and criticism. Then Veronica had many engravings and various copies of good pictures. The boy was immersed in beauty, and all he did he did for Veronica Gambara. She was no longer young—she surely was old enough to have been the boy's mother, and this was well. Such a love as this is spiritualized under the right conditions, and works itself up into art, where otherwise it might go dancing down the wanton winds and spend itself in folly.

Antonio painted for Veronica. All good things are done for some one else, and then after a while a standard of excellence is formed, and the artist works to please himself. But paradoxically, he still works for others—the singer sings for those who hear, the writer writes for those who understand, and the painter paints for those who would paint just such pictures as he, if they could. Antonio painted just such pictures as Veronica liked—she fixed the standard and he worked up to it.

And who then could possibly have foretold that the work of the baker's boy would rescue the place from oblivion, so that anywhere where the word is mentioned, "Correggio" should mean the boy Antonio Allegri, and not the village nor the wide domain of the Corregghesi!

The distinguishing feature of Correggio's work is his "putti." He delighted in these well-fed, unspanked and needlessly healthy cherubs. These rollicksome, frolicsome, dimpled boy babies—and that they are boys is a fact which I trust will not be denied—he has them everywhere!

Paul Veronese brings in his omnipresent dog—in every "Veronese," there he is, waiting quietly for his master. Even at the "Assumption" he sits in one corner, about to bark at the angels. The dog obtrudes until you reach a point where you do not recognize a "Veronese" without the dog—then you are grateful for the dog, and surely would scorn a "Veronese" minus the canine attachment. We demand at least one dog, as our legal and inborn right, with every "Veronese."

So, too, we claim the cherubs of Correggio as our own. They are so oblivious of clothes, so beautifully indifferent to the proprieties, so delightfully self-sufficient! They have no parents; they are mostly of one size, and are all of one gender. They hide behind the folds of every apostle's cloak, peer into the Magdalen's jar of precious ointment, cling to the leg of Saint Joseph, make faces at Saint Bernard, attend in a body at the "Annunciation"—as if it were any of their business—hover everywhere at the "Betrothal," and look on wonderingly from the rafters, or make fun of the Wise Men in the Stable.

They invade the inner Courts of Heaven, and are so in the way that Saint Peter falls over them, much to their amusement. They seat themselves astride of clouds, some fall off, to the great delight of their mates, and still others give their friends a boost over shadows that are in the way.

I said they had no parents—they surely have a father, and he is Correggio; but they are all in sore need of a mother's care.

I believe it was Schiller who once intimated that it took two to love anything into being. But Correggio seems to have performed the task of conjuring forth these putti all alone; yet it is quite possible that Veronica Gambara helped him. That he loved them is very sure—only love could have made them manifest. This man was a lover of children, otherwise he could not have loved putti, for he sympathized with all their baby pranks, and sorrows as well.

One cherub bumps his head against a cloud and straightway lifts a howl that must have echoed all through Paradise. His mouth is open to its utmost limit; tears start from between his closed eyes, which he gouges with chubby fists, and his whole face is distorted in intense pigmy wrath. One might really feel awfully sorry for him were it not for the fact that he sticks out one foot trying to kick a playfellow who evidently hadn't a thing to do with the accident. He's a bad, naughty cherub—that is what he is, and he deserves to have his obtrusive anatomy stung, just a little, with the back of a hairbrush, for his own good.

This same cherub appears in other places, once blowing a horn in another's ear; and again he is tickling a sleeping brother's foot with a straw. These putti play all the tricks that real babies do, and besides have a goodly list of "stunts" of their own. One thing is sure, to Correggio heaven would not be heaven without putti; and the chief difference that I see between putti and sure-enough babies is, that putti require no care and babies do.

Then putti are practical and useful—they hold up scrolls, tie back draperies, carry pictures, point out great folks, feed birds, and in one instance Correggio has ten of them leading a dog out to execution. They carry the train of the Virgin, assist the Apostles, act as ushers, occasionally pass the poorbox, make wreaths and crowns—but, I am sorry to say, sometimes get into unseemly scuffles for first place.