men, in the shape
of sketches made by their hands. This little museum, created in
sportive mood, bore all these names and many more, those of men, often
celebrated, who from sympathy or curiosity visited the place. Millet
was in life, as in art, somewhat apart in the later years; but he was
the consistent friend of Rousseau, whose life closed in the darkness
of a disordered mind.

[Illustration: "THE MAN WITH THE LEATHERN BELT." PORTRAIT OF GUSTAVE
COURBET AS A YOUNG MAN, BY HIMSELF.

From the original, in the Louvre.]

Narcisco Virgilio Diaz de la Pena was the noble name of him who, born
at Bordeaux in 1807, the son of a Spanish refugee, died at Mentone,
November 18, 1876. Left an orphan when very young, he drifted to
Paris, and found work, painting on china, in the manufactory at
Sevres. Here he met Dupre, employed like himself; and in their work in
other fields it is not fanciful to feel the influence of the delight
in rich translucent color, of the tones employed with over-emphasis
on the surface of _faience_. After a bitter acquaintance with poverty,
Diaz produced work which brought him great popularity. The earlier
pictures were studies in the forest of Fontainebleau, whose venerable
tree-trunks, moss-grown; whose lichen-covered rocks, and gleaming
pools reflecting the sky, he rendered with force of color and strength
of effect. Gradually he began to attempt the figure, which in his
hands never attained a higher plane than an assemblage of charming
though artificial color; and these little _bouquets_, which
superficially imitated Correggio, Da Vinci, or Prud'hon, as the fancy
seized the painter, bathed in a color that is undeniably agreeable,
were and are to this day loved by the collector. Of a whimsical
temperament, Diaz was the life of artist gatherings; and his facility
in work, and its popularity, gave him the means of doing many generous
acts, the memory of which lives. But of the group of men of his time,
he has exercised, perhaps, the least influence.

[Illustration: THE STONE-BREAKERS. FROM A PAINTING BY GUSTAVE COURBET.

One of Courbet's early pictures, which, when exhibited at the Salon,
excited considerable discussion, certain adverse critics finding in it
an appeal to the socialistic elements. It represents a scene common in
France, where stones are piled by the roadsides, to be broken up for
repairing the route.]

Jules Dupre rises to a higher plane. But his work, freed from the
colder acade