In the picture we have been examining we have seen something of the outdoor life of the French peasants, and now we are shown the interior of one of their houses, where a Knitting Lesson is being given. The girls of the French peasantry are taught only the plainest kinds of needlework. They have to begin to make themselves useful very early in life, and knitting is a matter of special importance. In these large families many pairs of stockings are needed, and all must be homemade. This is work which the little girls can do while the mother is busy with heavier labors. The knitting work becomes a girl's constant companion, and there are few moments when her hands are idle.
The little girl in our picture is still a beginner in the art, and the lesson is a very exciting occasion to her. Already she feels like a woman.
The mother and daughter have their chairs by the window to get a good light on the work. It is a large and beautiful casement window, of the kind almost universal in France, opening lengthwise in the middle in two parts which swing on hinges like doors. The window seat serves as a table, to hold the basket and scissors. The doll is thrust into the corner; our little girl has "put away childish things"—at least for the moment,—and takes her task very seriously.
The two chairs are drawn close together, the one a small counterpart of the other. The child braces her feet firmly on one of the rounds and bends her whole mind to her work. Both mother and daughter wear close white caps, though the little girl's is of a more childish pattern and does not cover her pretty hair in front.
The mother has been sewing on some large garment which lies across her lap. She lets the little girl work by herself for a time, and then stops to set her right. Already a considerable length of stocking has been made, but this is a place where close attention is needed. Perhaps it is time to begin shaping the heel. The mother's work is left altogether for a moment. Putting her arm about the child's shoulder, she takes the two little hands in hers, and guides the fingers holding the needles.
We get some idea of the quaint style of the building from this glimpse of the living-room. Probably it is a low stone cottage with thatched or tiled roof. The deep window seat shows how thick the walls are. Overhead we see the oak rafters.
The room looks spotlessly clean, as a good housewife's should. Though we see only a corner, that corner holds the most precious household possession, the linen chest. It stands against the wall, and is of generous size. French country people take great pride in storing up a quantity of linen; tablecloths, sheets, shirts, pillowcases, often of their own weaving, are piled in the deep clothes-presses. In well-to-do families there are enough for six months' use, the family washing taking place only twice a year, in spring and fall, like house-cleaning in America. We judge that our housekeeper is well provided, by the pile of neatly folded sheets on the press. The little clock, high on the wall, and the vase of flowers on the chest are the only touches of ornament in the room. On the wall are some small objects which look like shuttles for weaving.
As we look at the picture we feel sure that Millet was a lover of children, and it is pleasant to know that he had many of his own. The artist father was his children's favorite playmate, and at the close of his day's work in his studio, they ran to meet him with shouts of joy. He used to like to walk about the garden with them showing them the flowers. In winter time they sat together by the fire, and the father sang songs and drew pictures for the little ones. Sometimes taking a log from the wood basket he would carve a doll out of it, and paint the cheeks with vermilion. This is the sort of doll we see on the window seat in our picture.
Ruskin tells us that a true artist feels like a caged bird in painting any enclosed space, unless it contains some opening like a door or window. No amount of beauty will content us, he says, if we are shut in to that alone. Our picture is a good proof of this principle. We can easily fancy how different the effect would be without the window: the room would appear almost like a prisoner's cell. As it is, the great window suggests the out-of-door world into which it opens, and gives us a sense of larger space.
Our illustration is taken from a drawing. Millet was a painstaking artist who made many drawings and studies for his paintings. This is probably such a study, as there is also a painting by him of the same subject very similar to this.
In the picture called The Potato Planters we are reminded at once of the peasants we have already seen in Going to Work. We see here married people a few years older than the young people of the other picture working together in the fields.
It may be that this is their own little plot of ground, for they work with a certain air of proprietorship. They look prosperous, too, and are somewhat better dressed than common laborers. It is the highest ambition of the French peasant to own a bit of land. He will make any sacrifice to get it, and possessing it, is well content. He labors with constant industry to make it yield well.
The field here is at quite a distance from the village where the workers live. We can see the little group of houses on the horizon. In France the agricultural classes do not build their dwelling-houses on their farms, but live instead in village communities, with the farms in the outlying districts. The custom has many advantages. The families may help one another in various ways both by joining forces and exchanging services. They may also share in common the use of church, school, and post office. This French farming system has been adopted in Canada, while in our own country we follow the English custom of building isolated farmhouses.
In working season the French farmer must go daily to his labor at a distance. The people in our picture are fortunate enough to own a donkey which is their burden-bearer between house and field. The strong little creature can carry a heavy load properly disposed in pannier baskets. The panniers are made very deep and wide, but rather flat, so as to fit the sides of the donkey. With one of these hanging on each side of the saddle, the weight of the burden is so well distributed that it is easily borne.
The donkey of our picture has been relieved of his panniers, and now rests in the shade of some apple-trees. One of the baskets is in the mean time put to a novel use. Made soft and warm with a heavy cloak, it forms a nice cradle for the baby. The babies in French peasant families are often left at home with the grandmother, while the mother goes out to field work. The painter Millet himself was in childhood the special charge of his grandmother, while his mother labored on the farm. The people of our picture have another and, as it seems, a much pleasanter plan, in going to the field as a family party.
The day is well advanced and the work goes steadily on. It is potato planting, and the potato crop is of great importance to country people, second perhaps to the wheat, as it supplies food to both man and beast. The commoner varieties, as the large white, are raised for cattle, and the finer and sweeter kinds, the red and the yellow, are kept for the table.
The laborer and his wife move along the field, facing each other on opposite sides of the row they are planting. The man turns the sod with his hoe, a short-handled tool which long practice has taught him to use skilfully. The wife carries the potato seed in her apron, and as her husband lifts each spadeful of earth, she throws the seed into the hole thus made. He holds the hoe suspended a moment while the seed drops in, and then replaces the earth over it. The two work in perfect unison, each following the other's motion with mechanical regularity, as they move down the field together.
The two who work so well together in the field are sure to work well together in the home. The man has the serious, capable look of a provident husband. The woman looks like a good housewife. That shapely hand throwing the seed so deftly into the ground is well adapted to domestic tasks.
We may easily identify our picture as a familiar scene in Millet's Barbizon surroundings. We are told that "upon all sides of Barbizon, save one, the plain stretches almost literally as far as the eye can reach," and presents "a generally level and open surface." "There are no isolated farmhouses, and no stone walls, fences, or hedges, except immediately around the villages; and were it not all under cultivation, the plain might be taken for a vast common."[1]
It is evident, then, that we here see the plain of Barbizon and true Barbizon peasants of Millet's day. The villagers of the painter's acquaintance were on the whole a prosperous class, nearly all owning their houses and a few acres of ground. The big apple-tree under which the donkey rests is just such an one as grew in Millet's own little garden.
Fruit trees were his peculiar delight. He knew all their ways, and "all their special twists and turnings;" how the leaves of the apple-tree are bunched together on their twigs, and how the roots spread under ground. "Any artist," he used to say, "can go to the East and paint a palm-tree, but very few can paint an apple-tree."
From Edward Wheelwright's Recollections of Jean François Millet, in Atlantic Monthly, September, 1876.
Though the peasant women of France have so large a share in the laborious out-of-door work on the farms, they are not unfitted for domestic duties. In the long winter evenings they devote themselves to more distinctly woman's tasks, knitting and sewing, sometimes even spinning and weaving. Their housekeeping is very simple, for they live frugally, but they know how to make the home comfortable. Many modern inventions are still unknown to them, and we should think their customs very primitive, but on this account they are perhaps even more picturesque.
There is contentment in every line of the face of this Woman Sewing by Lamplight. It is the face of a happy young wife and mother. She sits close by her baby's bedside that she may listen to his gentle breathing as he sleeps, and she smiles softly to herself while she sews. It is a sweet face which bends over the work, and it is framed in the daintiest of white caps edged with a wide ruffle which is turned back over the hair above the forehead, that it may not shade her eyes.
The garment that lies on her lap is of some coarse heavy material. No dainty bit of fancy work is this, but a plain piece of mending. It may be the long cloak which the shepherd wraps about him in cold and stormy weather. Made from the wool grown on his own sheep, spun by his wife's own hand, it is unrivalled among manufactured cloths for warmth and comfort. The needle is threaded with a coarse thread of wool, which the sewer draws deftly through the cloth.
On a pole which runs from floor to ceiling is a hook, from which a lamp is suspended by a chain. This lamp appears to be a boat-shaped vessel with the wick coming out at one end. The light gilds the mother's gentle profile with shining radiance; it illumines the fingers of her right hand, and gleams on the coarse garment in her lap, transforming it into a cloth of gold.
The baby meanwhile lies on the other side of the lamp in the shadow. His little mouth is open, and he is fast asleep. We can almost fancy that the mother croons a lullaby as she sews. There is a pathetic little French song called La Petite Hélène, which Millet's mother used to sing to him, and which he in turn taught his own children. Perhaps we could not understand the words if we could hear it. But when mothers sing to their babies, whatever the tongue in which they speak, they use a common language of motherhood. Some such simple little lullaby as this, which mothers of another land sing to their babes, would doubtless interpret this mother's thoughts:—
When we remember that the ancient Romans had lamps constructed somewhat like that in the picture, it seems strange that so rude a contrivance should be in use in the nineteenth century. But this is only the practical and prosaic side of the question. For artistic purposes the lamp is just what is wanted in the composition.
You can see how a lamp with a glass chimney and shade would spoil the whole effect. We should lose that strange beautiful halo surrounding the wick, and the light would fall only on the work, instead of glorifying the face of the mother. These wonderful impressions of light add much to the artistic beauty of the picture, and explain why artists have so greatly admired it.
The picture naturally recalls that other Mother and Babe, Mary of Nazareth and the holy Child Jesus, who for so many centuries have inspired the imagination of artists. Often a painter has drawn his first conception for this sacred subject from some peasant mother and child such as these.
In order to give religious significance to their pictures, artists have tried in many ways to suggest the supernatural. They have introduced halos about the heads of Mary and Jesus, and have made the light seem to shine mysteriously from the child's body. Now our painter Millet, representing only an ordinary mother and babe, has not used any such methods. Nevertheless, without going beyond strict reality, he has produced a mystical effect of light which makes this picture worthy of a place among the Madonnas. The glow of the lamp transforms the familiar scene into a shrine of mother's love.
Many years ago the early English poet, Sir Philip Sidney, wrote a book about an imaginary country called Arcadia, noted for the sweetness of the air and the gentle manners of the people. As he described the beauties of the scenery there, he told of "meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers; each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober security; here a shepherd's boy piping as though he should never be old; there a young shepherdess knitting and withal singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voice-music."
We could easily fancy that our picture of the Shepherdess was meant to illustrate a scene in Arcadia. Here is the meadow "enamelled with eye-pleasing flowers," the sheep "feeding with sober security," and the young shepherdess herself knitting. Though she is not singing with her lips, her heart sings softly as she knits, and her hands keep time to the dream-music.
Early in the morning she led her flock out to the fallow pastures which make good grazing ground. All day long the sheep have nibbled the green herbage at their own sweet will, always under the watchful eye of their gentle guardian. Her hands have been busy all the time. Like patient Griselda in Chaucer's poem, who did her spinning while she watched her sheep, "she would not have been idle till she slept." Ever since she learned at her mother's knee those early lessons in knitting, she has kept the needles flying. She can knit perfectly well now while she follows her flock about. The work almost knits itself while her eyes and thoughts are engaged in other occupations.
The little shepherdess has an assistant too, who shares the responsibilities of her task. He is a small black dog, "patient and full of importance and grand in the pride of his instinct."[1] When a sheep is tempted by an enticing bit of green in the distance to stray from its companions, the dog quickly bounds after the runaway and drives it back to the flock. Only the voice of the shepherdess is needed to send him hither, thither, and yon on such errands.
Now nightfall comes, and it is time to lead the flock home to the sheepfold. The sheep are gathered into a compact mass, the ram in their midst. The shepherdess leads the way, and the dog remains at the rear, "walking from side to side with a lordly air," to allow no wanderer to escape.
Their way lies across the plain whose level stretch is unbroken by fences or buildings. In the distance men may be seen loading a wagon with hay. The sheep still keep on nibbling as they go, and their progress is slow. The shepherdess takes time to stop and rest now and then, propping her staff in front of her while she picks up a stitch dropped in her knitting. There is a sense of perfect stillness in the air, that calm silence of the fields, which Millet once said was the gayest thing he knew in nature.
The chill of nightfall is beginning to be felt, and the shepherdess wears a hood and cape. Her face shows her to be a dreamer. These long days in the open air give her many visions to dream of. Her companionship with dumb creatures makes her more thoughtful, perhaps, than many girls of her age.
As a good shepherdess she knows her sheep well enough to call them all by name. From their soft wool was woven her warm cape and hood, and there is a genuine friendship between flock and mistress. When she goes before them, they follow her, for they know her voice.
Among the traditions dear to the hearts of the French people is one of a saintly young shepherdess of Nanterre, known as Ste. Geneviève. Like the shepherdess of our picture, she was a dreamer, and her strange visions and wonderful sanctity set her apart from childhood for a great destiny. She grew up to be the saviour of Paris, and to-day her name is honored in a fine church dedicated to her memory. It was the crowning honor of Millet's life that he was commissioned to paint on the walls of this church scenes from the life of Ste. Geneviève. He did not live to do the work, but one cannot help believing that his ideals of the maiden of Nanterre must have taken some such shape as this picture of the Shepherdess.
In the painting from which our illustration is reproduced, the colors are rich and glowing. The girl's dress is blue and her cap a bright red. The light shining on her cloak turns it a rich golden brown. Earth and sky are glorified by the beautiful sunset light.
As we look across the plain, the earth seems to stretch away on every side into infinite distance. We are carried out of ourselves into the boundless liberty of God's great world. "The still small voice of the level twilight" speaks to us out of the "calm and luminous distance."
Ruskin has sought to explain the strange attractive power which luminous space has for us. "There is one thing that it has, or suggests," he says, "which no other object of sight suggests in equal degree, and that is,—Infinity. It is of all visible things the least material, the least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the earth prison-house, the most typical of the nature of God, the most suggestive of the glory of his dwelling place."[2]
Like the watchdog described in Longfellow's Evangeline, Part II.
In Modern Painters, in chapter on "Infinity," from which also the other quotations are drawn.
In walking through a French village, we get as little idea of the home life of the people as if we were in a large town or city. The houses usually border directly upon the street, and the spaces between are closed with high walls, shutting in the thoroughfare as completely as in a city "block." Behind these barriers each family carries on its domestic affairs in the privacy of its own domain. The cour, or dooryard, is the enclosure adjoining the house, and is surrounded on all sides by buildings or walls. Beyond this the more prosperous have also a garden or orchard, likewise surrounded by high walls.
In the dooryard are performed many of the duties both of the barn and the house. Here the cows are milked, the horses groomed, the sheep sheared, and the poultry fed. Here, too, is the children's playground, safe from the dangers of the street, and within hearing of the mother's voice.
It is into such a dooryard that we seem to be looking in this picture of The Woman Feeding Hens. It is a common enough little house which we see, built of stone, plastered over, in the fashion of the French provinces, and very low. In the long wall from the door to the garden gate is only one small high window. But time and nature have done much to beautify the spot. In the cracks of the roof, thatched or tiled, whichever it may be, many a vagrant seed has found lodgment. The weeds have grown up in profusion to cover the bare little place with leaf and flower. Indeed, there is here a genuine roof garden of the prettiest sort, and it extends along the stone wall separating the dooryard from the garden. Some one who has seen these vine-fringed walls in Barbizon describes them as gay with "purple orris, stonecrop, and pellitory."
A young wife presides in the little cottage home and rules her side of the dooryard with gentle sway. She has a curly-haired baby boy who creeps after her as she goes about her work. His inquiring mind is at this age investigating all the corners of the house, and before long he will be the young master of the dooryard.
The housewife boasts a small brood of hens. Early in the morning the voice of the chanticleer is heard greeting the dawn. Presently he leads his family forth to begin their day's scratching in the dooryard. Here and there they wander with contented clucks, as they find now and then a worm or grub for a titbit. But it is only a poor living which is to be earned by scratching. The thrifty housewife sees to it that her brood are well fed. At regular times she comes out of the house to feed them with grain, as she is doing now.
The baby hears the mother's voice saying, in what is the French equivalent, "Here chick-chick-chick," and creeps swiftly to the door. He, too, tries to call "chick-chick." He watches the odd creatures eagerly as they gobble up the seed. They stand about in a circle, heads all together in the centre, bobbing up and down as long as any food remains. Chanticleer holds back with true gallantry, and with an air of masculine superiority. The belated members of the brood come running up as fast as they can. The apron holds a generous supply, so that there is enough for all, but the housewife doles it out prudently by the handful, that none may suffer through the greediness of the others.
As we study the lines of the picture a little, they teach us some important lessons in composition. We note first the series of perpendicular lines at regular intervals across the width of the picture. These counterbalance the effect of the long perspective which is so skilfully indicated in the drawing of the house and the garden walk. The perspective is secured chiefly by three converging lines, the roof and ground lines of the house, and the line of the garden walk. These lines if extended would meet at a single point.
Once more let us recall Ruskin's teaching in regard to enclosed spaces.[1] The artist is unhappy if shut in by impenetrable barriers. There must always be, he says, some way of escape, it matters not by how narrow a path, so that the imagination may have its liberty.
This is the principle which our painter has applied in his picture. He wisely gives us a glimpse of the sky above, and shows us the shady vista of the garden walk leading to the great world beyond.
Our illustration is from a charcoal drawing, which, like the Knitting Lesson, is matched by a corresponding painting.
In Modern Painters in the chapter on "Infinity."
The early twilight of autumn has overtaken two peasants at the close of a day's work in the field. They are gathering the potato harvest. The dried plants are first pulled up, and the potatoes carefully dug out of the holes. Then the vegetables are taken from the furrows by the basketful, and poured into brown linen sacks to be carried home on the wheelbarrow. One of these sacks is not yet quite full, and the work has been prolonged after sunset.
The field is a long way from the village, but in the still air sounds are carried far across the plain. Suddenly the bell of the village church peals forth. The man stops digging and plunges his fork into the earth, and the woman hastily rises from her stooping posture. The Angelus bell is ringing, and it calls them to prayer.
Three times each day, at sunrise, midday, and sunset, this bell reminds the world of the birth of Jesus Christ. The strokes are rung in three groups, corresponding to the three parts of The Angelus, which are recited in turn. The first word gives the bell its name,—Angelus, the Latin for angel.
Thus run the words of the translation in the three couplets into which they are separated, and then this prayer is added: "We beseech thee, O Lord, pour forth thy grace into our hearts; that as we have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought into the glory of his resurrection, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord."
Besides this, after each couplet of the Angelus, is recited that short hymn of praise, beginning with the words which the angel of the annunciation addressed to Mary,[1] "Ave Maria." This is why the hour after sunset is so often called the hour of Ave Maria. The English poet Byron has written of this solemn moment:—
The atmosphere of prayer pervades the picture. The woman stands with bowed head and hands clasped over her breast. Her whole body sways slightly forward in the intensity of her devotion. Her husband has bared his head and holds his hat before him. Though he may seem somewhat awkward, he is not less sincerely reverent.
The sunset light shines on the woman's blue apron, gilds the potato sacks in the wheelbarrow, and gleams along the furrows. Farther away, the withered plants are heaped in rows of little piles. Beyond, the level plain stretches to meet the glowing sky, and, outlined on the horizon, is the spire of the church where the bells are ringing.
As the meaning of the picture grows upon us, we can almost hear the ringing of the bells. Indeed, to those familiar with such scenes in actual life, the impression is very vivid. The friend to whom Millet first showed his painting immediately exclaimed, "It is the Angelus." "Then you can hear the bells," said the artist, and was content.
The solemn influence of the picture is deepened by the effects of the twilight on the plains. A wide outlook across a level country, like a view of the sea, is always impressive, but it has peculiar power in the vague light which follows the sunset. Many poetic natures have felt this mystic spell of the gloaming as it descends upon the plain. Robert Louis Stevenson was one of these, and upon visiting Barbizon he described vividly his feelings at such an hour. We are told also that Millet loved to walk abroad at nightfall and note the mysterious effects of the twilight. "It is astonishing," he once said to his brother in such a walk, "how grand everything on the plain appears, towards the approach of night, especially when we see the figures thrown out against the sky. Then they look like giants."
In nearly all of Millet's pictures people are busy doing something. Either hands or feet, and sometimes both hands and feet, are in motion. They are pictures of action. In the Angelus, however, people are resting from labor; it is a picture of repose. The busy hands cease their work a moment, and the spirit rises in prayer. We have already seen, in other pictures, how labor may be lightened by love. Here we see labor glorified by piety.
The painting of the Angelus has had a remarkable history. The patron for whom it was first intended was disappointed with the picture when finished, and Millet had no little difficulty in finding a purchaser. In the course of time it became one of the most popular works of the painter, and is probably better known in our country than any other of his pictures. In 1889 it was bought by an American, and was carried on an exhibition tour through most of the large cities of the United States. Finally it returned to France, where it is now in the collection of M. Chauchard.
The Angelus is one of the few of Millet's works which have changed with time. The color has grown dark and the canvas has cracked somewhat, owing to the use of bitumen in the painting.
"Hail Mary"; see St. Luke, chapter i., verse 28.
The artist Millet loved to draw as well as to paint. Black and white pictures had their charm for him as truly as those in color. Indeed, he once said that "tone," which is the most important part of color, can be perfectly expressed in black and white. It is therefore not strange that he made many drawings. Some of these, like the Knitting Lesson and the Woman Feeding Hens, were, as we have seen, studies for paintings. The picture called Filling the Water-Bottles was, on the other hand, a charcoal drawing, corresponding to no similar painting. It is in itself a finished work of art.
It is a typical French river scene which we see here, and it gives us an idea how large a part a river may take in the life of French country people. Sometimes it is the sole source of water for a village. Then it is not only the common village laundry, in which all clothing is washed, but it is also the great village fountain, from which all drinking-water is drawn.
The women in our picture have come to the bank with big earthen jars to fill. It is in the cool of early morning, and the mist still lies thick over the marshes bordering the river. The sun, seen through the mist, looks like a round ball. On the farther bank, where a group of poplars grow, some horsemen ride up to ford the stream. They, too, are setting forth early on their day's work. One is already half across.
The women have picked out, along the marshy bank, a point of land jutting into the river like a miniature promontory, and seemingly of firm soil. It is only large enough to hold one at a time, so they take turns. One is now filling a bottle, while the other waits, standing beside two jars.
The first woman kneels on the ground, and supporting herself firmly by placing one hand on the edge of the bank, she grasps the jar by the handle, with her free right hand, and swings it well out over the water. Experience has taught her the most scientific way of filling the jar with least muscular strain. She does not try to plunge it down into the water, but holding it on its side, slightly tipped, draws it along with the mouth half under the surface, sucking in the water as it moves. We see what hard, firm muscles she has to hold the arm out so tensely. Her arm acts like a compass describing the arc of a circle through the water with the jar. As we look, we can almost see her completing the circle, and drawing up the full jar upon the bank.
The woman who waits her turn is capable of the same feat. There is power in every line of her figure as she stands in what has been well described by a critic as a "majestic pose." She straightens back to rest, with her arms on her hips, quite unconscious that there is anything fine in her appearance.
Look a minute and you will see that she is the woman of the Angelus. As we saw her in the other picture, with head bowed and hands clasped on her breast, we did not realize how grand and strong she was. But raising her head, throwing back her chest, and putting her arms on her sides, she shows us now her full power.
Both women are dressed alike in the clothing which is now familiar to us from the other pictures,—coarse gowns made with scanty skirts, long aprons reaching nearly to the bottom of the dress, kerchiefs fastened snugly about their heads, and wooden sabots. We could not imagine anything that would become them better. It is part of the French nature to understand the art of dressing, and this art is found just as truly among the peasants of the provinces as in the fashionable world at Paris.
The picture is a study in black and white which any one who cares for drawing will wish to examine attentively. He was indeed a master who could, with a single bit of charcoal, make us feel the witchery of this early morning hour by the river-side. We note the many different "tones" of the picture,—the faint soft mist of the distant atmosphere over the marshes, growing darker on the poplars and the hilly bank in the middle distance; the shadow of the bank in the river; the gleam of the sunlight on the calm water mid-stream; the ripples about the jar; the sharply defined figures of the women, dark on the side turned from the sun; and the quivering shadow of the kneeling woman in the ripple-broken water in front.
Among primitive peoples the hour of sunrise was a sacred time, when hymns were sung and sacrifices were offered to the life-giving sun. The painter Millet has expressed something of the mystic solemnity of the hour in this picture. The sun has awakened the world to work, and in its strength men and women go forth to labor.[1]