490 GERMANIC LITERATURE 



to look upon," says Deerslayer. "Not a tree disturbed even by red- 

 skin hand, as I can discover, but everything left in the ordering of 

 the Lord, to live and die according to His own designs and laws!" 

 To him, as to Gregory, settlement seems a desecration of the virgin 

 wilderness! "The woods are never silent," says the Pathfinder, "if 

 one but knows how to interpret their voice. I have wandered through 

 them alone for many days, with never a longing for company. And 

 as regards conversation, there is no lack of varied and instructive 

 talk, if one but understands the language." Gregory, too, goes 

 rather into the forest than to vespers or to the public-house, and he 

 begins " gradually to hear the talk of the wood, and his senses were 

 opened to understand its signs, and they were all words of splendor 

 and of mystery and of love concerning the great Gardener, whom he 

 often felt he must behold, wandering somewhere among the trees." 

 The poetic gift, with which Cooper so often endows his heroes, is 

 Gregory's also. Deerslayer is called "a man of strong native poetic 

 feeling. He loved the woods for their sublime solitudes and for the 

 impress that they everywhere bore of the might and wisdom of their 

 Creator. He rarely moved through them without pausing to dwell on 

 some peculiar beauty that gave him pleasure, though seldom at- 

 tempting to investigate the causes; and never did a day pass without 

 his communing in spirit, and this, too, without the aid of forms or 

 language, with the infinite Source of all he saw, felt, and beheld." 

 Gregory's former hunting-comrade praises him in these terms: "The 

 wonderful thoughts were unfolded from his heart even in those days, 

 like the flowers of some exotic spring . . . and it often seemed as 

 if one were reading from some beautiful old book of poetry. Many 

 jeered at him, and against them he closed the fountain of his words 

 as with a stone." And in another place: "His whole course of 

 life, his very soul, he had moulded after the teachings of the forest; 

 and in turn he so harmonized with it that he could not be thought of 

 in another setting. Thus he made himself and the wilderness appear 

 to the eyes of his proteges in such wondrous enchanted form and 

 nature that it began to speak to them, too, while they seemed to 

 themselves to be always floating in the midst of a fairy-tale." The 

 ''traditions and legends" of his people influence him as they do the 

 young Deerslayer, who is averse to all book-learning and rejects all 

 metaphysical hair-splitting. 



But Cooper did not picture his son of the forest the Pathfinder, 

 the Deerslayer, Hawk Kye. Leather Stocking, etc. simply as a 

 young and vigorous man, but also followed him through his later 

 life; he makes the representative of inherited right, of remorseless 

 truth and of faith, when pressed by the always advancing settlers 

 and pioneers, the bringersof innovation and destroyers of the forest's 

 majesty, retreat in proud self-command to the west; and conducts 



