| | 1 | Author: | Cooper
James Fenimore
1789-1851 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Deerslayer: Or, the First War-path  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | On the human imagination, events produce the effects
of time. Thus, he who has travelled far and seen much,
is apt to fancy that he has lived long; and the history that
most abounds in important incidents, soonest assumes the
aspect of antiquity. In no other way can we account for
the venerable air that is already gathering around American
annals. When the mind reverts to the earliest days of colonial
history, the period seems remote and obscure, the
thousand changes that thicken along the links of recollections,
throwing back the origin of the nation to a day so
distant as seemingly to reach the mists of time; and yet
four lives of ordinary duration would suffice to transmit,
from mouth to mouth, in the form of tradition, all that
civilized man has achieved within the limits of the republic.
Although New York, alone, possesses a population
materially exceeding that of either of the four smallest
kingdoms of Europe, or materially exceeding that of the
entire Swiss Confederation, it is little more than two centuries
since the Dutch commenced their settlement, rescuing
the region from the savage state. Thus, what seems venerable
by an accumulation of changes, is reduced to familiarity
when we come seriously to consider it solely in
connection with time. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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