In this book you find the very life; the most vulgar prose, and the
most exquisite poetry. You follow the hunter in his path, walking
through the noblest and fairest scenes only to shoot the poor animals
that were happy there, winning from the pure atmosphere little benefit
except to good appetite, sleeping at night in the dirty hovels, with
people who burrow in them to lead a life but little above that of the
squirrels end foxes. There is throughout that air of room enough, and
free if low forms of human nature, which, at such times, makes
bearable all that would otherwise be so repulsive.
But when we come to the girl who is the presiding deity, or rather the
tutelary angel of the scene, how are all discords harmonized; how all
its latent music poured forth! It is a portrait from the life--it has
the mystic charm of fulfilled reality, how far beyond the fairest
ideals ever born of thought! Pure, and brilliantly blooming as the
flower of the wilderness, she, in like manner, shares while she
sublimes its nature. She plays round the most vulgar and rude beings,
gentle and caressing, yet unsullied; in her wildness there is nothing
cold or savage; her elevation is soft and warm.
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