e something strange
springing up out of the soil in the dark of night, he was not
mushroom. He did not know the meaning of affectation, and I doubt if
he even knew what was meant by simplicity, so much was he that element
himself.

It is with fascination that we think of him as living his life out
after his discharge for incompetency from the customs service outside
the fortifications of Paris, and doubtless with the strain of poverty
upon him also, within a ten minutes' walk from the world famous
quartiers, and almost certainly knowing nothing of them. That there
was a Julian's or a Colarossi's anywhere about, it is not likely that
he knew, or if he knew, not more than vaguely. He drew his quaint
inspirations directly from the sources of nature and some pencil
drawings I have seen prove the high respect and admiration, amounting
to love and worship, which he had for nature and the phenomena of
her, to be disclosed at every hedge.

If he was no success as a douanier, he was learning a great deal,
meanwhiles, about those delicate and radiant skies which cover Paris
at all times, charming always for their lightness and delicacy,
pearl-like in their quiet splendour; and it was during this service of
his at the city's gates that he learned his lovely sense of blacks and
greys and silvers, of which Paris offers so much always, and which
predominate in his canvases. Even his tropical scenes strive in no way
toward artificiality of effect, but give rather the sense of their
profundity than of oddity, of their depth and mystery than of
peculiarity. He gives us the sense of having been at home in them in
his imagination, being so well at home in those scenes of Paris which
were daily life to him. We find in Rousseau true naivete, without
struggle, real child-likeness of attitude and of emotion, following
diligently with mind and with spirit the forms of those stored images
that have registered themselves with directness upon the area of his
imagination, never to be forgotten, rendered with perfect simplicity
for us in these quaint pictures of his, superb in the richness of
quality which makes of them, what they are to the eye that is
sympathetic to them, pictures out of a life undisturbed by all the
machinations and intrigues of the outer world, a life intimate with
itself, remote from all agencies having no direct association with it,
living with a sweet gift of enchantment with the day's disclosures,
occupied apparently wit