h Holbein's, although it might be a similar scene. Instead
of a sad old man, a cheerful young man; instead of a team of thin, sorry
horses, two yoke of four sturdy, spirited cattle; instead of Death, a
lovely child; instead of an image of despair and a suggestion of
destruction, a spectacle of energetic action and a thought of happiness.

Then it was that the French quatrain:

"A la sueur de ton visaige," etc.,

and the _O fortunatos_----_agricolas_ of Virgil, came to my mind
simultaneously, and when I saw that handsome pair, the man and the
child, performing a grand and solemn task under such poetic conditions,
and with so much grace combined with so much strength, I had a feeling
of profound compassion mingled with involuntary respect. Happy the
husbandman. Yes, so I should be in his place, if my arm should suddenly
become strong and my chest powerful, so that they could thus fertilize
nature and sing to her, without my eyes losing the power to see and my
brain to understand the harmony of colors and sounds, the delicacy of
tones, and the gracefulness of contours,--in a word, the mysterious
beauty of things, and, above all, without my heart ceasing to be in
relation with the divine sentiment that presided at the immortal and
sublime creation.

But, alas! that man has never understood the mystery of the beautiful,
that child will never understand it! God preserve me from the thought
that they are not superior to the animals they guide, and that they have
not at times a sort of ecstatic revelation that charms away their
weariness and puts their cares to sleep! I see upon their noble brows
the seal of the Lord God, for they are born kings of the earth much more
truly than they who possess it, because they have paid for it. And the
proof that they feel that it is so is found in the fact that you cannot
expatriate them with impunity, and that they love the ground watered by
the sweat of their brow, that the true peasant dies of homesickness in
the uniform of the soldier, far from the fields where he was born. But
that man lacks a part of the enjoyments I possess, immaterial enjoyments
to which he is abundantly entitled, he the workman in the vast temple
which the heavens are vast enough to embrace. He lacks knowledge of his
own sentiments. They who condemned him to servitude from his mother's
womb, being unable to take from him the power of reverie, have taken the
power of reflection.

Ah! well, such as he is, inc