INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 493 



For the rest, the opening and closing scenes of the Mountain 

 Forest, both of which are enacted in the ruins of Wittingshausen, 

 recall the close of the Deerslayer. Judith is separated from her lover; 

 " fifteen years had passed ere it is in the power of the Deerslayer to 

 revisit the 'Glimmerglass.' . . . They reached the lake just as 

 the sun was setting. Here all was unchanged ; the river still rushed 

 through its bower of trees; the little rock was wasting away by the 

 slow action of the waves in the course of centuries; the mountains 

 stood in their native dress, dark, rich, and mysterious; w r hile the 

 sheet glistened in its solitude, a beautiful gem of the forest. . . . 

 From the point, they paddled the canoe towards the shoal, where 

 the remains of the castle were still visible, a picturesque ruin. The 

 storms of winter had long since unroofed the house, and decay had 

 eaten into the logs. All the fastenings were untouched, but the seasons 

 rioted in the place, as if in mockery at the attempt to exclude them." 

 Everything is desolate and dilapidated. "From all these signs it 

 w r as probable that the lake had not been visited since the occurrence 

 of the final scene of our tale. Accident or tradition had rendered it 

 again a spot sacred to nature." 



The greatest agreement is shown in Cooper's and Stifter's de- 

 scriptions of scenery. Each pictured his land as the land of marvels. 

 Both depict the forest, the primeval forest in its untouched virginity, 

 in its silence and calm, in its sublimity and greatness, as it came 

 from God's hand. The feeling of sublime loneliness awakens in 

 their heroes the thought of God's nearness. "So it is in the woods," 

 says Pathfinder, " there are moments when God seems to walk 

 forth in all his might, and then again a calm reigns far and wide, as if 

 his eternal spirit had peacefully laid itself down to slumber." Even 

 so Stifter gives his heroes the deep feeling of inward piety. Both 

 authors array themselves on the side of nature, against the all- 

 uprooting culture. Both are conservative spirits. Both lose them- 

 selves gladly in the stream of nature. Here again their agreement 

 in detail can be explained from the likeness of their fundamental 

 convictions. In the before-mentioned preface to the Mot lei/ Stones 

 we read: "The breezes of the air. the purling of the water, the 

 growing of plants, the verdure of the earth, the brightness of the 

 sky. the twinkling of the stars. I hold to be great; the magnificence 

 of the thunderstorm, the bolt that cleaves houses, the whirlwind 

 that devastates the fields, the mountain that spews forth fire, the 

 earthquake that overwhelms the lands. 1 hold not to be greater 

 than the above-mentioned appearances. 1 even hold them to be less, 

 since they are but effects of much higher laws." So Cooper also 

 prefers the gentle mobility of smaller things, the quiet majesty 

 of all that is really groat and powerful; for Deerslayer, love dwells 

 in the forest, in the dew on the grass, in the twigs of the trees, in 



