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 memory with marvellous exactness. He therefore attached great importance to exercise of the memory. He said that his own was naturally refractory, but that he had succeeded in training it, and that a memory-picture of this sort is more faithful, as to the general impression than one made from nature." From this cause comes the simplification of his landscapes and figures, the mind having retained only the leading features and eliminated those accessory details which do not immediately depend upon the impression as a whole. Thence, too, comes the rather planned, the almost abstract character of his realism. All that he says is true but it is rather a summary than a complete view.

The very studio in which Millet painted was of a special kind. Light hardly came into it. He said so himself: "You never saw me paint except in shadow; it is that half-light which I need to make my sight keen and my brain clear." It must be owned that this is a strange enough way of painting full daylight effects,—the high light of noonday in the open fields. Let us not forget that Millet's eyes often troubled him and that he