and in the German Diets.  These had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend.  Few enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region; many enough to spread a network or awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness.  This sort of religious talisman being secured, a man the most afraid of ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the reader) becomes armed into courage to wander for days in their sylvan recesses.  The mountains of the Vosges on the eastern frontier of France, have never attracted much notice from Europe, except in 1813-14, for a few brief months, when they fell within Napoleon’s line of defence against the Allies.  But they are interesting for this, amongst other features—­that they do not, like some loftier ranges, repel woods:  the forests and they are on sociable terms. Live and let live is their motto.  For this reason, in part, these tracts in Lorraine were a favorite hunting ground with the Carlovingian princes.  About six hundred years before Joanna’s childhood, Charlemagne was known to have hunted there.  That, of itself, was a grand incident in the traditions of a forest or a chase.  In these vast forests, also, were to be found (if the race was not extinct) those mysterious fawns that tempted solitary hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits.  Here was seen, at intervals, that ancient stag who was already nine hundred years old, at the least, but possibly a hundred or two more, when met by Charlemagne; and the thing was put beyond doubt by the inscription upon his golden collar.  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 marquess.  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 becomes equal to anything that could be desired.  And I have heard candid sportsmen declare that, outside of these very forests near the Vosges, 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 coloring 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.  Joanna, therefore, in her quiet occupation of a shepherdess, would be led continually to brood over the political condition of her country, by the traditions of the past no less than by the mementoes of the local present.