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 all that he saw, he breathed the spirit of the Scriptures. His mind was full of them, he quoted them often (even a little too often for the taste of some of his friends); towards the end of his life he used often to read them of an evening to his family. In them lies the explanation of his pictures and of that ceaseless struggle of man with the earth which he never tired of painting and of which the significance is neither political nor social, but religious, and is expressed by those verses of Genesis that Millet so often repeated, verses which are the motto of his life and of his work:

"Cursed is the ground. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread!"

It was essential that attention should be called at the very beginning of this study to such exceptional religious and moral originality. This, far more even than his 25