Two centuries long was he in painting this Beautiful Valley.

Nature ground and mixed the colors for him all the while, for he was blind.

He was poor; often cold and hungry, and his children, with blue fingers and pale, silent eyes, sometimes asked for bread in winter he could not give.

He lived in a low cottage, small, damp and dark, and laid him down at night upon a bed of straw.

He could not read; and his thoughts of human life and its hereafter were few and small.