But in alluding to the topographical character of Cole’s landscapes, I am very far from wishing to belittle the essential greatness of that painter. While his means of expression were comparatively inadequate, while he may even have mistaken the true province of landscape painting, his conception of nature was unquestionably an exalted one, and likely to be acceptable to a spirit so eagerly aspiring as Inness’s. Moreover--and this is often overlooked--it was the natural result of the time and environment. To a young people, with its growing consciousness of free and independent nationality, surrounded by the vastness of nature as yet scarcely altered by man, what could have been more attractive than this sense of nature’s grandeur? In their attitude toward the nature around them they may have been nearer to the truth than we give them credit for. We must not forget that our estimate of the functions of landscape painting comes to us from Holland, a country of limited horizons, through France, whose soil is highly cultivated and studded with the charming intimacy of rural life. Finding this _paysage intime_ true to nature and intrinsically lovely, while the so-called classic landscape was grandiloquently superficial, we have assumed that the former is the true and only satisfactory representative of pictorial landscape. Perhaps too rashly; for even as painting has been able to compass the solemnities of religion, so a painter may arise who will join to technical ability sufficient force of mind to compass the solemnities of nature. Meanwhile, we should at least remember that Cole drew his inspiration from American scenery, which the modern painter is studying through spectacles borrowed from France and Holland.