494 GERMANIC LITERATURE 



gentle rain, in the clouds that hover over the blue sky. the birds 

 that sing in the bushes, the cool springs in which he slakes his thirst, 

 and in all the other noble gifts that God's providence affords. 



Stifter's whole romance of the woods is foreshadowed in Cooper, 

 the sublime solitude of the wild, the solemn stillness and cheerful 

 calm. An atmosphere of pure morality issues from the high, gloomy 

 vault of verdure, from the colonnades and porticoes of the forest. 

 The forest never deceives, "for it is governed and controlled by a 

 hand that remains always unshaken." The "quiet charm of nature, 

 the impression of profound calm and undisturbed solitude" subdues 

 men. The landscape as pictured by the two writers is almost the 

 same, a fact that no longer surprises one who has had the opportunity 

 of comparing the scenery of eastern North America with that of 

 Stifter's home. Cooper as well as Stifter speaks of dark hemlocks, 

 "quivering aspens and melancholy pines, white birches, firs, and 

 maples." The psychological process is to be conceived about as 

 follows. No doubt the mysterious witchery and charm of the woods 

 had enthralled Stifter's soul from his youth; but Cooper's example 

 first led him to give expression to these beauties. The tongue of 

 the silent admirer of nature is loosed by the eloquent foreign author. 

 Soon the pupil surpasses the master. Cooper's stock of words and 

 figures, in his descriptions of landscape, is very limited; we find 

 almost all of his favorite expressions in Stifter again, but they are 

 modified and developed into greater richness. The woodland glade 

 is in Cooper "a sort of oasis in the solemn obscurity of the virgin 

 forest"; the little spot where the forest house stands, in Stifter. is 

 a "warm, sheltered oasis"; the forest is called a "luxuriant oasis": 

 Gregory is designated as the "jewel of the wilderness." or. with 

 a biblical allusion, as the "voice of the desert." Cooper takes refuge 

 gladly in citations from other writers; Stifter, more self-dependent, 

 can draw from his own spring of poetry. Cooper is more prolix 

 and circumstantial; where he requires a whole sentence ("It was 

 principally covered with oaks, which, as is usual in the American 

 forests, grew to a great height without throwing out a branch, and 

 then arched in a dense and rich foliage") Stifter can express the same 

 in a single epithet, " high-trunked." Both give life. soul, personality 

 to nature. In Cooper a half-fallen giant of the forest leans so far 

 over the surfare of the water as to make care necessary in avoiding 

 its limbs. In the first version of the Mountain Forcxt, Stifter calls 

 a tree a "grandfather," or speaks of the grandchildren and great- 

 grandchildren of an unusually large tree. In Cooper a beech and 

 a hemlock lean together "as loving as two brothers, or, for that 

 matter, more loving than some brothers." In a more fully developed 

 scene in Stifter the slender stocks of the pines stand in company 

 and gossip when a breath of wind comes by. the old maple stands by 



