THE STORIES OF NOTED PAINTINGS. 271 



LE MOIS D'OCTOBBE. (La Becolte des pommes de terre.) 

 OCTOBER. (THE GATHERING OF THE POTATOES.) 



By AUGUSTE HAGBORG (born in Gothenburg, Sweden.) Pupil 

 of the Academy of Fine Arts of Stockholm, and of Palmarole. 

 This young and rising artist has given us here a most suggestive 

 picture of old country peasant life. A wide view of field and 

 sky serves as relief and contrast to two central life-size figures 

 which for strong portraiture and perfection of detail are not 

 excelled in modern painting. 



The picture, a study and an ever-growing conception in itself, 

 derives a further attraction from the fact that it is a representa- 

 tive painting, the first one brought to this country, of that 

 peculiar school in France of which Jean Millet was the originator 

 and master. It seeks to portray and perpetuate all there is of a 

 nobler life and a higher humanity in the classes that have come 

 down through centuries of serfdom. Peasant life in Europe is 

 a sad picture at best ; and there is little promise of a brighter one 

 in the future. But we on this side of the world know that from 

 such earnest and self-reliant toilers as stand forth in this picture, 

 the inheritors of the reserve force of twenty generations, are 

 born the illustrious men and the fairest women of our rising 

 republic. 



THE PROPHECY OF THE SIBYL. 



By ANDREA DAL FRISO (1551-1611). The early Christian 

 Fathers relate that the Emperor Augustus Caesar, when the 

 Roman Senate passed the decree according to him divine honors, 

 went to the Tiburtine Sibyl at Tivoli, near Rome, and consulted 

 her whether he ought to receive them. She replied that it better 

 befitted him whose power was declining to go away and hold his 

 peace that a Hebrew child would soon be born who would reign 

 over all the gods. And she pointed to the heavens where 

 appeared the Holy Virgin with her child, seated on an altar in 

 the clouds. The Emperor bowed down and worshiped the 

 miraculous vision ; and on his return he erected on the Capitoline 

 Hill an altar to the " First born of God." The church of Santa 

 Maria in Capitolino now consecrates the ground where this first 

 Christian altar is said to have been raised. 



