JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
defended violently against his enemies, and fifty of whose sketches he contrived in spite of poverty to purchase at the public exhibition of his works in 1864, was judged by Millet to take rank with Theodore Rousseau, and perhaps Barye among these, his chosen few. All the other contemporary artists, the painters of the Luxembourg gallery, seemed to him "repulsively insipid" and his antipathy to modern art applies not only to the productions, but to the very essence of this art. He explains himself clearly upon the point. "With us, art is no longer anything more than an accessory, a drawing room accomplishment, whereas formerly, and even down to the middle ages it was one of the columns of ancient society, its conscience and the expression of its religious feeling." The blame of this decadence lies not only with the artists; it rests on the whole of society and especially upon those who direct it or claim to direct it, the intellectual aristocracy: "What have the best brains of our period done for art? Less than nothing. Lamartine (I saw him choosing out his favourite pictures in the Salon of 1848) was only touched by a subject that corres-
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