Page:François-Millet.djvu/170

JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET with his political or literary interests. He would never have placed a picture of Rembrandt's in his own house. Victor Hugo puts Louis Boulanger and Delacroix on the same level. George Sand has a woman's prudence, and gets out of the question with fine musical words. Alexander Dumas is under the thumb of Delacroix, and apart from him does not think freely. I have not been able to dig out a single really felt page in Balzac, Eugène Sue, Frédéric Soulié, Barbier, Méry, etc.—a single page that might serve us as a guide, or that bears witness to a real understanding of art. Proudhon's work on art is a magnificent bit of special pleading, full of ingenious sallies, but it is a lecture fit for the blind asylum." 152