_April 18_.--Went out three or four miles to the house of Quincy Shaw,
to see a collection of J. F. Millet's pictures. Two rapt hours. Never
before have I been so penetrated by this kind of expression. I stood
long and long before "the Sower." I believe what the picture-men
designate "the first Sower," as the artist executed a second copy, and
a third, and, some think, improved in each. But I doubt it. There is
something in this that could hardly be caught again--a sublime murkiness
and original pent fury. Besides this masterpiece, there were many
others, (I shall never forget the simple evening scene, "Watering the
Cow,") all inimitable, all perfect as pictures, works of mere art; and
then it seem'd to me, with that last impalpable ethic purpose from the
artist (most likely unconscious to himself) which I am always looking
for. To me all of them told the full story of what went before and
necessitated the great French revolution--the long precedent crushing
of the masses of a heroic people into the earth, in abject poverty,
hunger--every right denied, humanity attempted to be put back for
generations--yet Nature's force, titanic here, the stronger and hardier
for that repression--waiting terribly to break forth, revengeful--the
pressure on the dykes, and the bursting at last--the storming of the
Bastile--the execution of the king and queen--the tempest of massacres
and blood. Yet who can wonder?
Could we wish humanity different?
Could we wish the people made of wood or stone?
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?
The true France, base of all the rest, is certainly in these pictures. I
comprehend "Field-People Reposing," "the Diggers," and "the Angelus"
in this opinion. Some folks always think of the French as a small race,
five or five and a half feet high, and ever frivolous and smirking.
Nothing of the sort. The bulk of the personnel of France, before the
revolution, was large-sized, serious, industrious as now, and simple.
The revolution and Napoleon's wars dwarf'd the standard of human size,
but it will come up again. If for nothing else, I should dwell on my
brief Boston visit for opening to me the new world of Millet's pictures.
Will America ever have such an artist out of her own gestation, body,
soul?
_Sunday, April 17._--An hour and a half, late this afternoon, in silence
and half light, in the great nave of Memorial hall, Cambridge, the walls
thickly cover'd with mural tablets, bearing the names of students and
graduates of the university who fell in the secession war.
_April 23._--It was well I got away in fair order, for if I had staid
another week I should have been killed with kindness, and with eating
and drinking.