I believe Charlemagne knighted
the stag; and, if ever he is met again by a king, he ought to be made
an earl, or, being upon the marches of France, a marquis. Observe, I
don't absolutely vouch for all these things: my own opinion varies. On
a fine breezy forenoon I am audaciously sceptical; but as twilight sets
in my credulity grows steadily, till it becomes equal to anything that
could be desired. And I have heard candid sportsmen declare that,
outside of these very forests, they laughed loudly at all the dim tales
connected with their haunted solitudes, but, on reaching a spot
notoriously eighteen miles deep within them, they agreed with Sir Roger
de Coverley that a good deal might be said on both sides.
Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) connect distant
generations with each other, are, for that cause, sublime; and the
sense of the shadowy, connected with such appearances that reveal
themselves or not according to circumstances, leaves a colouring of
sanctity over ancient forests, even in those minds that utterly reject
the legend as a fact.
But, apart from all distinct stories of that order, in any solitary
frontier between two great empires--as here, for instance, or in the
desert between Syria and the Euphrates--there is an inevitable
tendency, in minds of any deep sensibility, to people the solitudes
with phantom images of powers that were of old so vast.
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