Gerard Manley Hopkins Called Them Inscapes

Several years ago when I was working on my Masters thesis, I came across the journals and poetry of poet/priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). A brilliant philosopher and thinker, Hopkins discussed natural objects as having inscapes "unified complex characteristics that give each thing its uniqueness and that differentiate it from other things (Everett, Glenn. The Victorian Web. www.victorianweb.org). I think of the term often, especially when I begin to see the changing of the seasons, which comes later in Upstate New York than in other areas of the country.