That last statement of his about the civilized landscape is well worth noting, because that was the landscape he painted. His subjects are related to human life, and some of our interest in his pictures is due to the fact that he gives us thoughts, emotions, and sensations that are comprehensible by all. He tells things that every one may have thought but no one before him so well expressed. In other words, he brings our own familiar landscape home to us with new truth and beauty. This, it may be presumed, is the function of the poet and the painter in any land. It was the quality that made Burns and Wordsworth great and may account in measure for the fame of Rembrandt, Hobbema, Constable--yes, and Inness. When he was young there were traditions of the Hudson River school in the air. The “mappy” landscape with its crude color and theatrical composition held the place of honor. Inness was probably captivated by it at first sight, but he soon discovered its emptiness. It had no basis in nature; it was not the landscape we see and know. The “Course of Empire” and the “Voyage of Youth” were only names for studio fabrications. The truly poetic landscape lay nearer home. This was what Inness called the “civilized landscape,” the familiar landscape, the _paysage intime_, the one we all see and know because it has always been before us--its very nearness perhaps blinding us to its beauty. How hard it is to believe that the true poetry of the world lies close about us! We keep fancying that romance is not in our native village, but in Rome or Constantinople or Cairo; and that the poetic landscape is not that of the wood-lot behind the house, but that of Arden Forest or some Hesperidian garden far removed from us. Emerson has noted that at sea every ship looks romantic but the one we sail in. Yet there is plenty of romance in our ship if we have the eyes to see it; and there is abundance of beauty in the wood-lot if we have the intentness of purpose to study it out and understand it. Any one can admire the “view” from a mountain-top, but it takes some imagination to see beauty in the quiet meadow. And after you have seen it it requires a great deal of labor and skill to tell what you have seen. Wordsworth and Constable made more failures with it than successes. Just so with Inness. He shot wide of the mark innumerable times, but when he hit, it was with very decided effect.