CHAPTER THE LAST. 417 



Every people while yet young, while their instincts 

 are still fresh and their sympathies keen and alive to 

 natural influences, has made the forest their temple; 

 choosing, if they built an altar, the dense interlacing 

 branches of venerable trees for the roof that was to 

 shelter it. They felt how solemn was the subdued light, 

 and the trembling stillness: the low murmur attuned 

 their simple minds religiously, and a presentiment awoke 

 within them that there " was a spirit in the woods." 



And now even in the songs you hear the young 

 hunters sing, while sitting round the hearth of an even- 

 ing after a good day's sport, the forest and its delights 

 play a prominent part. Among the northern nations 

 the forest may be said to have had, and indeed still to 

 have, a poetry of its own. There were the "Wald- 

 Marchen" and " Wald-Lieder," and in its gloom many 

 a mythe was born. The Germans have an appropriate 

 word — Waldlust — to describe the peculiar delight which 

 the woodland imparts ; and as such solitude is also dif- 

 ferent from that experienced any other where, for it too 

 there is a particular designation — Wald-einsamkeit. 



But, as many a story in the preceding pages will have 

 shown, there are other far more stirring causes of ex- 

 citement, contrasting strangely enough with the calmer 

 pleasures I have just attempted to describe. From time 

 to time a report will come of the depredations committed 

 by poachers, or that one of the foresters has been badly 

 wounded, or that a Tyrolese has been shot who had 

 come across to fetch a chamois in the Bavarian moun- 

 tains. Or perhaps, according to a preconcerted arrange- 

 ment, on a certain day all the gamekeepers will be on 

 the look-out for miles round, in expectation of meeting 

 the marauders ; and, if you also go out, the report of a 

 rifle from some neighbouring mountain fills you with 



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