Page:François-Millet.djvu/114

 say that Millet has painted pictures of more strength and meaning than this. The Angelus nevertheless has a musical charm of its own. Millet meant the sounds of a country evening, the distant chime of bells, to be heard in it. He deeply felt and has expressed the melancholy poetry of the hour when man's struggle with the earth passes into peace, and the august grandeur of the simple lonely prayer in the vast deserted plain at twilight.

Together with The Angelus Millet sent a dramatic picture to the Salon, Death and the Woodcutter, which was refused by the hanging committee. The refusal made a great stir. Friends and foes of Millet's alike, all felt that by this time he was an artistic and moral force; and all were indignant that the committee should have dared to treat him with so little respect. Alexandre Dumas took up Millet's defence and Mantz began a campaign against the committee in the "Gazette des Beaux Arts" (15th June 1859). In the same year 96