He led her through the passage, up a narrow flight of stairs. An old woman in a flaring cap sat at the top, nodding,—wakening now and then, to rock herself to and fro, and give the shrill Irish keen.

"You know that stoker who was killed in the mill a month ago? Of course not,—what are such people to you? There was a girl who loved him,-you know what that is? She's dead now, here. She drank herself to death,—a most unpicturesque suicide. I want you to look at her. You need not blush for her life of shame, now; she's dead.—Is Hetty here?"

The woman got up.

"She is, Zur. She is, Mem. She's lookin' foine in her Sunday suit. Shrouds is gone out, Mem, they say."

She went tipping over the floor to something white that lay on a board, a candle at the head, and drew off the sheet. A girl of fifteen, almost a child, lay underneath, dead,—her lithe, delicate figure decked out in a barred plaid skirt, and stained, faded velvet bodice,—her neck and arms bare. The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in its sleep,—the soft, fair hair gathered off the tired forehead. Margaret leaned over her shuddering, pinning her handkerchief about the child's dead neck.

"How young she is!" muttered Knowles. "Merciful God, how young she is!—What is that you say?" sharply, seeing Margaret's lips move.

"'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.'"

"Ah, child, that is old-time philosophy. Put your hand here, on her dead face. Is your loss like hers?" he said lower, looking into the dull pain in her eyes. Selfish pain he called it.

"Let me go," she said. "I am tired."

He took her out into the cool, open road, leading her tenderly enough,—for the girl suffered, he saw.

"What will you do?" he asked her then. "It is not too late,—will you help me save these people?"

She wrung her hands helplessly.

"What do you want with me?" she cried, weakly. "I have enough to bear."

The burly black figure before her seemed to tower and strengthen; the man's face in the wan light showed a terrible life-purpose coming out bare.

"I want you to do your work. It is hard; it will wear out your strength and brain and heart. Give yourself to these people. God calls you to it. There is none to help them. Give up love, and the petty hopes of women. Help me. God calls you to the work."

She went on blindly: he followed her. For years he had set apart this girl to help him in his scheme: he would not be balked now. He had great hopes from his plan: he meant to give all he had: it was the noblest of aims. He thought some day it would work like leaven through the festering mass under the country he loved so well, and raise it to a new life. If it failed,—if it failed, and saved one life, his work was not lost. But it could not fail.

"Home!" he said, stopping her as she reached the stile,—"oh, Margaret, what is home? There is a cry going up night and day from homes like that den yonder, for help,—and no man listens."

She was weak; her brain faltered.

"Does God call me to this work? Does He call me?" she moaned.

He watched her eagerly.

"He calls you. He waits for your answer. Swear to me that you will help His people. Give up father and mother and love, and go down as Christ did. Help me to give liberty and truth and Jesus' love to these wretches on the brink of hell. Live with them, raise them with you."

She looked up, white; she was a weak, weak woman, sick for her natural food of love.

"Is it my work?"

"It is your work. Listen to me, Margaret," softly. "Who cares for you? You stand alone to-night. There is not a single human heart that calls you nearest and best. Shiver, if you will,—it is true. The man you wasted your soul on left you in the night and cold to go to his bride,—is sitting by her now, holding her hand in his."

He waited a moment, looking down at her, until she should understand.

"Do you think you deserved this of God? I know that yonder on the muddy road you looked up to Him, and knew it was not just; that you had done right, and this was your reward. I know that for these two years you have trusted in the Christ you worship to make it right, to give you your heart's desire. Did He do it? Did He hear your prayer? Does He care for your weak love, when the nations of the earth are going down? What is your poor hope to Him, when the very land you live in is a wine-press that will be trodden some day by the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God? O Christ!—if there be a Christ,—help me to save it!"

He looked up,—his face white with pain. After a time he said to her,—

"Help me, Margaret! Your prayer was selfish; it was not heard. Give up your idle hope that Christ will aid you. Swear to me, this night when you have lost all, to give yourself to this work."

The storm had been dark and windy: it cleared now slowly, the warm summer rain falling softly, the fresh blue stealing broadly from behind the gray. It seemed to Margaret like a blessing; for her brain rose up stronger, more healthful.

"I will not swear," she said, weakly. "I think He heard my prayer. I think He will answer it. He was a man, and loved as we do. My love is not selfish; it is the best gift God has given me."

Knowles went slowly with her to the house. He was not baffled. He knew that the struggle was yet to come; that, when she was alone, her faith in the far-off Christ would falter; that she would grasp at this work, to fill her empty hands and starved heart, if for no other reason,—to stifle by a sense of duty her unutterable feeling of loss. He was keenly read in woman's heart, this Knowles. He left her silently, and she passed through the dark passage to her own room.

Putting her damp shawl off, she sat down on the floor, leaning her head on a low chair,—one her father had given her for a Christmas gift when she was little. How fond Holmes and her father used to be of each other! Every Christmas he spent with them. She remembered them all now. "He was sitting by her now, holding her hand in his." She said that over to herself, though it was not hard to understand.

After a long time, her mother came with a candle to the door.

"Good-night, Margaret. Why, your hair is wet, child!"

For Margaret, kissing her good-night, had laid her head down a minute on her breast. She stroked the hair a moment, and then turned away.

"Mother, could you stay with me to-night?"

"Why, no, Maggie,—your father wants me to read to him."

"Oh, I know. Did he miss me to-night,—father?"

"Not much; we were talking old times over,—in Virginia, you know."

"I know; good-night."

She went back to the chair. Tige was there,—for he used to spend half of his time on the farm. She put her arm about his head. God knows how lonely the poor child was when she drew the dog so warmly to her heart: not for his master's sake alone; but it was all she had. He grew tired at last, and whined, trying to get out.

"Will you go, Tige?" she said, and opened the window.

He jumped out, and she watched him going towards town. Such a little thing, it was! But not even a dog "called her nearest and best."

Let us be silent; the story of the night is not for us to read. Do you think that He, who in the far, dim Life holds the worlds in His hand, knew or cared how alone the child was? What if she wrung her thin hands, grew sick with the slow, mad, solitary tears?—was not the world to save, as Knowles said?

He, too, had been alone; He had come unto His own, and His own received him not: so, while the struggling world rested, unconscious, in infinite calm of right, He came close to her with human eyes that had loved, and not been loved, and had suffered with that pain. And, trusting Him, she only said, "Show me my work! Thou that takest away the pain of the world, have mercy upon me!"

For that night, at least, Holmes swept his soul clean of doubt and indecision; one of his natures was conquered,—finally, he thought. Polston, if he had seen his face as he paced the street slowly home to the mill, would have remembered his mother's the day she died. How the stern old woman met death half-way! why should she fear? she was as strong as he. Wherein had she failed of duty? her hands were clean: she was going to meet her just reward.

It was different with Holmes, of course, with his self-existent soul. It was life he accepted to-night, he thought,—a life of growth, labor, achievement,—eternal.

"Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast,"—favorite words with him. He liked to study the nature of the man who spoke them; because, I think, it was like his own,—a Titan strength of endurance, an infinite capability of love and hate and suffering, and over all (the peculiar identity of the man) a cold, speculative eye of reason, that looked down into the passion and depths of his growing self, and calmly noted them, a lesson for all time.

"Ohne Hast." Going slowly through the night, he strengthened himself by marking how all things in Nature accomplish a perfected life through slow, narrow fixedness of purpose,—each life complete in itself: why not his own, then? The windless gray, the stars, the stone under his feet, stood alone in the universe, each working out its own soul into deed. If there were any all-embracing harmony, one soul through all, he did not see it. Knowles—that old skeptic—believed in it, and called it Love. Even Goethe himself, what was it he said? "Der Allumfasser, der Allerhalter, fasst und erhaelt er nicht dich, mich, sich selbst?"

There was a curious power in the words, as he lingered over them, like half-comprehended music,—as simple and tender as if they had come from the depths of a woman's heart: it touched him deeper than his power of control. Pah! it was a dream of Faust's; he, too, had his Margaret; he fell, through that love.

He went on slowly to the mill. If the name or the words woke a subtile remorse or longing, he buried them under restful composure. Whether they should ever rise like angry ghosts of what might have been, to taunt the man, only the future could tell.

Going through the gas-lit streets, Holmes met some cordial greeting at every turn. What a just, clever fellow he was! people said: one of those men improved by success: just to the defrauding of himself: saw the true worth of everybody, the very lowest: hadn't one spark of self-esteem: despised all humbug and show, one could see, though he never said it: when he was a boy, he was moody, with passionate likes and dislikes; but success had improved him, vastly. So Holmes was popular, though the beggars shunned him, and the lazy Italian organ-grinders never held their tambourines up to him.

The mill street was dark; the building threw its great shadow over the square. It was empty, he supposed; only one hand generally remained to keep in the furnace-fires. Going through one of the lower passages, he heard voices, and turned aside to examine. The management was not strict, and in case of a fire the mill was not insured: like Knowles's carelessness.

It was Lois and her father,—Joe Yare being feeder that night. They were in one of the great furnace-rooms in the cellar,—a very comfortable place that stormy night. Two or three doors of the wide brick ovens were open, and the fire threw a ruddy glow over the stone floor, and shimmered into the dark recesses of the shadows, very home-like after the rain and mud without. Lois seemed to think so, at any rate, for she had made a table of a store-box, put a white cloth on it, and was busy getting up a regular supper for her father,—down on her knees before the red coals, turning something on an iron plate, while some slices of ham sent up a cloud of juicy, hungry smell.

The old stoker had just finished slaking the out-fires, and was putting some blue plates on the table, gravely straightening them. He had grown old, as Polston said,—Holmes saw, stooped much, with a low, hacking cough; his coarse clothes were curiously clean: that was to please Lois, of course. She put the ham on the table, and some bubbling coffee, and then, from a hickory board in front of the fire, took off, with a jerk, brown, flaky slices of Virginia johnny-cake.

"Ther' yoh are, father, hot 'n' hot," with her face on fire,—"ther'—yoh—are,—coaxin' to be eatin'.—Why, Mr. Holmes! Father! Now, ef yoh jes' hedn't hed yer supper?"

She came up, coaxingly. What brooding brown eyes the poor cripple had! Not many years ago he would have sat down with the two poor souls and made a hearty meal of it: he had no heart for such follies now.

Old Yare stood in the background, his hat in his hand, stooping in his submissive negro fashion, with a frightened watch on Holmes.

"Do you stay here, Lois?" he asked, kindly, turning his back on the old man.

"On'y to bring his supper. I couldn't bide all night 'n th' mill,"—the old shadow coming on her face,—"I couldn't, yoh know. He doesn't mind it."

She glanced quickly from one to the other in the silence, seeing the fear on her father's face.

"Yoh know father, Mr. Holmes? He's back now. This is him."

The old man came forward, humbly.

"It's me, Master Stephen."

The sullen, stealthy face disgusted Holmes. He nodded, shortly.

"Yoh've been kind to my little girl while I was gone," he said, catching his breath. "I thank yoh, master."

"You need not. It was for Lois."

"'Twas fur her I comed back hyur. 'Twas a resk,"—with a dumb look of entreaty at Holmes,—"but fur her I thort I'd try it. I know 'twas a resk; but I thort them as cared fur Lo wud be merciful. She's a good girl, Lo. She's all I hev."

Lois brought a box over, lugging it heavily.

"We hevn't chairs; but yoh'll sit down, Mr. Holmes?" laughing as she covered it with a cloth. "It's a warrm place, here. Father studies 'n his watch, 'n' I'm teacher,"—showing the torn old spelling-book.

The old man came eagerly forward, seeing the smile flicker on Holmes's face.

"It's slow work, master,—slow. But Lo's a good teacher, 'n' I'm tryin',—I'm tryin' hard."

"It's not slow, Sir, seein' father hedn't 'dvantages, like me. He was a"—

She stopped, lowering her voice, a hot flush of shame on her face.

"I know."

"Ben't that 'n 'xcuse, master, seein' I knowed noght at the beginnin'? Thenk o' that, master. I'm tryin' to be a different man. Fur Lo. I am tryin'."

Holmes did not notice him.

"Good-night, Lois," he said, kindly, as she lighted his lamp.

He put some money on the table.

"You must take it," as she looked uneasy. "For Tiger's board, say. I never see him now. A bright new frock, remember."

She thanked him, her eyes brightening, looking at her father's patched coat.

The old man followed Holmes out.

"Master Holmes"—

"Have done with this," said Holmes, sternly. "Whoever breaks law abides by it. It is no affair of mine."

The old man clutched his hands together fiercely, struggling to be quiet.

"Ther's none knows it but yoh," he said, in a smothered voice. "Fur God's sake be merciful! It'll kill my girl,—it'll kill her. Gev me a chance, master."

"You trouble me. I must do what is just."

"It's not just," he said, savagely. "What good'll it do me to go back ther'? I was goin' down, down, an' bringin' th' others with me. What good'll it do you or the rest to hev me ther'? To make me afraid? It's poor learnin' frum fear. Who taught me what was right? Who cared? No man cared fur my soul, till I thieved 'n' robbed; 'n' then judge 'n' jury 'n' jailers was glad to pounce on me. Will yoh gev me a chance? will yoh?"

It was a desperate face before him; but Holmes never knew fear.

"Stand aside," he said, quietly. "To-morrow I will see you. You need not try to escape."

He passed him, and went slowly up through the vacant mill to his chamber.

The man sat down on the lower step a few moments, quite quiet, crushing his hat up in a slow, steady way, looking up at the mouldy cobwebs on the wall. He got up at last, and went in to Lois. Had she heard? The old scarred face of the girl looked years older, he thought,—but it might be fancy. She did not say anything for a while, moving slowly, with a new gentleness, about him; her very voice was changed, older. He tried to be cheerful, eating his supper: she need not know until to-morrow. He would get out of the town to-night, or—There were different ways to escape. When he had done, he told her to go; but she would not.

"Let me stay th' night," she said. "I ben't afraid o' th' mill."

"Why, Lo," he said, laughing, "yoh used to say yer death was hid here, somewheres."

"I know. But ther's worse nor death. But it'll come right," she said, persistently, muttering to herself, as she leaned her face on her knees, watching,—"it'll come right."

The glimmering shadows changed and faded for an hour. The man sat quiet. There was not much in the years gone to soften his thought, as it grew desperate and cruel: there was oppression and vice heaped on him, and flung back out of his bitter heart. Nor much in the future: a blank stretch of punishment to the end. He was an old man: was it easy to bear? What if he were black? what if he were born a thief? what if all the sullen revenge of his nature had made him an outcast from the poorest poor? Was there no latent good in this soul for which Christ died, that a kind hand might not have brought to life? None? Something, I think, struggled up in the touch of his hand, catching the skirt of his child's dress, when it came near him, with the timid tenderness of a mother touching her dead baby's hair,—as something holy, far off, yet very near: something in his old crime-marked face,—a look like this dog's, putting his head on my knee,—a dumb, unhelpful love in his eyes, and the slow memory of a wrong done to his soul in a day long past. A wrong to both, you say, perhaps; but if so, irreparable, and never to be recompensed. Never?

"Yoh must go, my little girl," he said at last.

Whatever he did must be done quickly. She came up, combing the thin gray hairs through her fingers.

"Father, I dunnot understan' what it is, rightly. But stay with me,—stay, father!"

"Yoh've a many frien's, Lo," he said, with a keen flash of jealousy. "Ther's none like yoh,—none."

She put her misshapen head and scarred face down on his hand, where he could see them. If it had ever hurt her to be as she was, if she had ever compared herself bitterly with fair, beloved women, she was glad now and thankful for every fault and deformity that brought her nearer to him, and made her dearer.

"They're kind, but ther's not many loves me with true love, like yoh. Stay, father! Bear it out, whatever it be. Th' good time'll come, father."

He kissed her, saying nothing, and went with her down the street. When he left her, she waited, and, creeping back, hid near the mill. God knows what vague dread was in her brain; but she came back to watch and help.

Old Yare wandered through the great loom-rooms of the mill with but one fact clear in his cloudy, faltering perception,—that above him the man lay quietly sleeping who would bring worse than death on him to-morrow. Up and down, aimlessly, with his stoker's torch in his hand, going over the years gone and the years to come, with the dead hatred through all of the pitiless man above him,—with now and then, perhaps, a pleasanter thought of things that had been warm and cheerful in his life,—of the corn-huskings long ago, when he was a boy, down in "th' Alabam',"—of the scow his young master gave him once, the first thing he really owned: he was almost as proud of it as he was of Lois when she was born. Most of all remembering the good times in his life, he went back to Lois. It was all good, there, to go back to. What a little chub she used to be! Remembering, with bitter remorse, how all his life he had meant to try and do better, on her account, but had kept putting off and putting off until now. And now—Did nothing lie before him but to go back and rot yonder? Was that the end, because he never had learned better, and was a "dam' nigger"?

"I'll not leave my girl!" he muttered, going up and down,—"I'll not leave my girl!"

If Holmes did sleep above him, the trial of the day, of which we have seen nothing, came back sharper in sleep. While the strong self in the man lay torpid, whatever holier power was in him came out, undaunted by defeat, and unwearied, and took the form of dreams, those slighted messengers of God, to soothe and charm and win him out into fuller, kindlier life. Let us hope that they did so win him; let us hope that even in that unreal world the better nature of the man triumphed at last, and claimed its reward before the terrible reality broke upon him.

Lois, over in the damp, fresh-smelling lumber-yard, sat coiled up in one of the creviced houses made by the jutting boards. She remembered how she used to play in them, before she went into the mill. The mill,—even now, with the vague dread of some uncertain evil to come, the mill absorbed all fear in its old hated shadow. Whatever danger was coming to them lay in it, came from it, she knew, in her confused, blurred way of thinking. It loomed up now, with the square patch of ashen sky above, black, heavy with years of remembered agony and loss. In Lois's hopeful, warm life this was the one uncomprehended monster. Her crushed brain, her unwakened powers, resented their wrong dimly to the mass of iron and work and impure smells, unconscious of any remorseless power that wielded it. It was a monster, she thought, through the sleepy, dreading night,—a monster that kept her wakeful with a dull, mysterious terror.

When the night grew sultry and deepest, she started from her half-doze to see her father come stealthily out and go down the street. She must have slept, she thought, rubbing her eyes, and watching him out of sight,—and then, creeping out, turned to glance at the mill. She cried out, shrill with horror. It was a live monster now,—in one swift instant, alive with fire,—quick, greedy fire, leaping like serpents' tongues out of its hundred jaws, hungry sheets of flame maddening and writhing towards her, and under all a dull and hollow roar that shook the night. Did it call her to her death? She turned to fly, and then—He was alone, dying! He had been so kind to her! She wrung her hands, standing there a moment. It was a brave hope that was in her heart, and a prayer on her lips never left unanswered, as she hobbled, in her lame, slow way, up to the open black door, and, with one backward look, went in.

* * * * *



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.

The publication, now brought to a close, of a new edition of the novels of Cooper[6] gives us a fair occasion for discharging a duty which Maga has too long neglected, and saying something upon the genius of this great writer, and, incidentally, upon the character of a man who would have been a noticeable, not to say remarkable person, had he never written a line. These novels stand before us in thirty-two goodly duodecimo volumes, well printed, gracefully illustrated, and, in all external aspects, worthy of generous commendation. With strong propriety, the publishers dedicate this edition of the "first American novelist" to "the American People." No one of our great writers is more thoroughly American than Cooper; no one has caught and reproduced more broadly and accurately the spirit of our institutions, the character of our people, and even the aspects of Nature in this our Western world. He was a patriot to the very core of his heart; he loved his country with a fervid, but not an undiscerning love: it was an intelligent, vigilant, discriminating affection that bound his heart to his native land; and thus, while no man defended his country more vigorously when it was in the right, no one reproved its faults more courageously, or gave warning and advice more unreservedly, where he felt that they were needed.

[6] We refer to the new edition of the novels of Cooper by Messrs. W.A. Townsend & Co., with illustrations by Darley.

This may be one reason why Cooper has more admirers, or at least fewer disparagers, abroad than at home. On the Continent of Europe his novels are everywhere read, with an eager, unquestioning delight. His popularity is at least equal to that of Scott; and we think a considerable amount of testimony could be collected to prove that it is even greater. But the fact we have above stated is not the only explanation of this. He was the first writer who made foreign nations acquainted with the characters and incidents of American frontier and woodland life; and his delineations of Indian manners and traits were greatly superior in freshness and power, if not in truth, to any which had preceded them. His novels opened a new and unwrought vein of interest, and were a revelation of humanity under aspects and influences hitherto unobserved by the ripe civilization of Europe. The taste which had become cloyed with endless imitations of the feudal and mediaeval pictures of Scott turned with fresh delight to such original figures—so full of sylvan power and wildwood grace—as Natty Bumppo and Uncas. European readers, too, received these sketches with an unqualified, because an ignorant admiration. We, who had better knowledge, were more critical, and could see that the drawing was sometimes faulty, and the colors more brilliant than those of life.

The acute observer can detect a parallel between the relation of Cooper to America and that of Scott to Scotland. Scott was as hearty a Scotchman as Cooper an American: but Scott was a Tory in politics and an Episcopalian in religion; and the majority of Scotchmen are Whigs in politics and Presbyterians in religion. In Scott, as in Cooper, the elements of passion and sympathy were so strong that he could not be neutral or silent on the great questions of his time and place. Thus, while the Scotch are proud of Scott, as they well may be,—while he has among his own people most intense and enthusiastic admirers,—the proportion of those who yield to his genius a cold and reluctant homage is probably greater in Scotland than in any other country in Christendom. "The rest of mankind recognize the essential truth of his delineations, and his loyalty to all the primal instincts and sympathies of humanity"; but the Scotch cannot forget that he opposed the Reform Bill, painted the Covenanters with an Episcopalian pencil, and made a graceful and heroic image of the detested Claverhouse.

The novels of Cooper, in the dates of their publication, cover a period of thirty years: beginning with "Precaution," in 1820, and ending with "The Ways of the Hour," in 1850. The production of thirty-two volumes in thirty years is honorable to his creative energy, as well as to the systematic industry of his habits. But even these do not constitute the whole of his literary labors during these twenty-nine years. We must add five volumes of naval history and biography, ten volumes of travels and sketches in Europe, and a large amount of occasional and controversial writings, most of which is now hidden away in that huge wallet wherein Time puts his alms for Oblivion. His literary productions other than his novels would alone be enough to save him from the reproach of idleness. In estimating a writer's claims to honor and remembrance, the quantity as well as the quality of his work should surely be taken into account; and in summing up the case of our great novelist to the jury of posterity, this point should be strongly put.

Cooper's first novel, "Precaution," was published when he was in his thirty-first year. It owed its existence to an accident, and was but an ordinary production, as inferior to the best of his subsequent works as Byron's "Hours of Idleness" to "Childe Harold." It was a languid and colorless copy of exotic forms: a mere scale picked from the surface of the writer's mind, with neither beauty nor vital warmth to commend it. We speak from the vague impressions which many long years have been busy in effacing; and we confess that it would require the combined forces of a long voyage and a scanty library to constrain us to the task of reading it anew.

And yet, such as it was, it made a certain impression at the time of its appearance. The standard by which it was tried was very unlike that which would now be applied to it: there was all the difference between the two that there is between strawberries in December and strawberries in June. American literature was then just beginning to "glint forth" like Burns's mountain daisy, and rear its tender form above the parent earth. The time had, indeed, gone by—which a friend of ours, not yet venerable, affirms he can well remember—when school-boys and collegians, zealous for the honor of indigenous literature, were obliged to cite, by way of illustration, such works as Morse's Geography and Hannah Adams's "History of the Jews"; but it was only a faint, crepuscular light, that streaked the east, and gave promise of the coming day. Irving had just completed his "Sketch-Book," which was basking in the full sunshine of unqualified popularity. Dana, in the thoughtful and meditative beauty of "The Idle Man," was addressing a more limited public. Percival had just before published a small volume of poems; Halleck's "Fanny" had recently appeared; and so had a small duodecimo volume by Bryant, containing "The Ages," and half a dozen smaller poems. Miss Sedgwick's "New England Tale" was published about the same time. But a large proportion of those who are now regarded as our ablest writers were as yet unknown, or just beginning to give sign of what they were. Dr. Channing was already distinguished as an eloquent and powerful preacher, but the general public had not yet recognized in him that remarkable combination of loftiness of thought with magic charm of style, which was soon to be revealed in his essays on Milton and Napoleon Bonaparte. Ticknor and Everett were professors in Harvard College, giving a new impulse to the minds of the students by their admirable lectures; and the latter was also conducting the "North American Review." Neither had as yet attained to anything more than a local reputation. Prescott, a gay and light-hearted young man,—gay and light-hearted, in spite of partial blindness,—the darling of society and the idol of his home, was silently and resolutely preparing himself for his chosen function by a wide and thorough course of patient study. Bancroft was in Germany, and working like a German. Emerson was a Junior in College. Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, and Poe were school-boys; Mrs. Stowe was a school-girl; Whipple and Lowell were in the nursery, and Motley and the younger Dana had not long been out of it.

"Precaution," though an indifferent novel, was yet a novel; of the orthodox length, with plot, characters, and incidents; and here and there a touch of genuine power, as in the forty-first chapter, where the scene is on board a man-of-war bringing her prizes into port. It found many readers, and excited a good deal of curiosity as to who the author might be.

"Precaution" was published on the 25th of August, 1820, and "The Spy" on the 17th of September, 1821. The second novel was a great improvement upon the first, and fairly took the public by storm. We are old enough to remember its first appearance; the eager curiosity and keen discussion which it awakened; the criticism which it called forth; and, above all, the animated delight with which it was received by all who were young or not critical. Distinctly, too, can we recall the breathless rapture with which we hung over its pages, in those happy days when the mind's appetite for books was as ravenous as the body's for bread-and-butter, and a novel, with plenty of fighting in it, was all we asked at a writer's hands. In order to qualify ourselves for the task which we have undertaken in this article, we have read "The Spy" a second time; and melancholy indeed was the contrast between the recollections of the boy and the impressions of the man. It was the difference between the theatre by gas-light and the theatre by day-light: the gold was pinchbeck, the gems were glass, the flowers were cambric and colored paper, the goblets were gilded pasteboard. Painfully did the ideal light fade away, and the well-remembered scene stand revealed in disenchanting day. With incredulous surprise, with a constant struggle between past images and present revelations, were we forced to acknowledge the improbability of the story, the clumsiness of the style, the awkwardness of the dialogue, the want of Nature in many of the characters, the absurdity of many of the incidents, and the painfulness of some of the scenes. But with all this, a candid, though critical judgment could not but admit that these grave defects were attended by striking merits, which pleaded in mitigation of literary sentence. It was stamped with a truth, earnestness, and vital power, of which its predecessor gave no promise. Though the story was improbable, it seized upon the attention with a powerful grasp from the very start, and the hold was not relaxed till the end. Whatever criticism it might challenge, no one could call it dull: the only offence in a book which neither gods nor men nor counters can pardon. If the narrative flowed languidly at times, there were moments in which the incidents flashed along with such vivid rapidity that the susceptible reader held his breath over the page. The character of Washington was an elaborate failure, and the author, in his later years, regretted that he had introduced this august form into a work of fiction; but Harvey Birch was an original sketch, happily conceived, and, in the main, well sustained. His mysterious figure was recognized as a new accession to the repertory of the novelist, and not a mere modification of a preexisting type. And, above all, "The Spy" had the charm of reality; it tasted of the soil; it was the first successful attempt to throw an imaginative light over American history, and to do for our country what the author of "Waverley" had done for Scotland. Many of the officers and soldiers of the Revolutionary War were still living, receiving the reward of their early perils and privations in the grateful reverence which was paid to them by the contemporaries of their children and grandchildren. Innumerable traditionary anecdotes of those dark days of suffering and struggle, unrecorded in print, yet lingered in the memories of the people, and were told in the nights of winter around the farm-house fire; and of no part of the country was this more true than of the region in which the scene of the novel is laid. The enthusiasm with which it was there read was the best tribute to the substantial fidelity of its delineations. All over the country, it enlisted in its behalf the powerful sentiment of patriotism; and whatever the critics might say, the author had the satisfaction of feeling that the heart of the people was with him.

Abroad, "The Spy" was received with equal favor. It was soon translated into most of the languages of Europe; and even the "gorgeous East" opened for it its rarely moving portals. In 1847, a Persian version was published in Ispahan; and by this time it may have crossed the Chinese wall, and be delighting the pig-tailed critics and narrow-eyed beauties of Pekin.

The success of "The Spy" unquestionably determined Cooper's vocation, and made him a man of letters. But he had not yet found where his true strength lay. His training and education had not been such as would seem to be a good preparation for a literary career. His reading had been desultory, and not extensive; and the habit of composition had not been formed in early life. Indeed, in mere style, in the handling of the tools of his craft, Cooper never attained a master's ease and power. In his first two novels the want of technical skill and literary accomplishment was obvious; and the scenery, subjects, and characters of these novels did not furnish him with the opportunity of turning to account the peculiar advantages which had come to him from the events of his childhood and youth. In his infancy he was taken to Cooperstown, a spot which his father had just begun to reclaim from the dominion of the wilderness. Here his first impressions of the external world, as well as of life and manners, were received. At the age of sixteen he became a midshipman in the United States navy, and remained in the service for six years. A father who, in training up his son for the profession of letters, should send him into the wilderness in his infancy and to sea at sixteen, would seem to be shooting very wide of the mark; but in this, as in so many things, there is a divinity that shapes our rough-hewn ends. Had Cooper enjoyed the best scholastic advantages which the schools and colleges of Europe could have furnished, they could not have fitted him for the work he was destined to do so well as the apparently untoward elements we have above adverted to; for Natty Bumppo was the fruit of his woodland experience, and Long Tom Coffin of his sea-faring life.

"The Pioneers" and "The Pilot" were both published in 1823; "Lionel Lincoln" in 1825; and "The Last of the Mohicans" in 1826. We may put "Lionel Lincoln" aside, as one of his least successful productions; but the three others were never surpassed, and rarely equalled, by any of his numerous subsequent works. All the powerful, and nearly all the attractive, qualities of his genius were displayed in these three novels, in their highest degree and most ample measure. Had he never written any more,—though we should have missed many interesting narratives, admirable pictures, and vigorously drawn characters,—we are not sure that his fame would not have been as great as it is now. From these, and "The Spy," full materials may be drawn for forming a correct estimate of his merits and his defects. In these, his strength and weakness, his gifts and deficiencies, are amply shown. Here, then, we may pause, and, without pursuing his literary biography any farther, proceed to set down our estimate of his claims as a writer. Any critic who dips his pen in ink and not in gall would rather praise than blame; therefore we will dispose of the least gracious part of our task first, and begin with his blemishes and defects.

A skilful construction of the story is a merit which the public taste no longer demands, and it is consequently fast becoming one of the lost arts. The practice of publishing novels in successive numbers, so that one portion is printed before another is written, is undoubtedly one cause of this. But English and American readers have not been accustomed to this excellence in the works of their best writers of fiction; and therefore they are not sensitive to the want of it. This is certainly not one of Scott's strong points. Fielding's "Tom Jones" is, in this respect, superior to any of the "Waverley Novels," and without an equal, so far as we know, in English literature. But, in sitting in judgment upon a writer of novels, we cannot waive an inquiry into his merits on this point. Are his stories, simply as stories, well told? Are his plots symmetrically constructed and harmoniously evolved? Are his incidents probable? and do they all help on the catastrophe? Does he reject all episodical matter which would clog the current of the narrative? Do his novels have unity of action? or are they merely a series of sketches, strung together without any relation of cause and effect? Cooper, tried by these rules, can certainly command no praise. His plots are not carefully or skilfully constructed. His incidents are not probable in themselves, nor do they succeed each other in a natural and dependent progression. His characters get into scrapes from which the reasonable exercise of common faculties should have saved them; and they are rescued by incredible means and impossible instruments. The needed man appears as unaccountably and mysteriously as if he had dropped from the clouds, or emerged from the sea, or crept up through a fissure in the earth. The winding up of his stories is often effected by devices nearly as improbable as a violation of the laws of Nature. His personages act without adequate motives; they rush into needless dangers; they trust their fate, with unsuspecting simplicity, to treacherous hands.

In works of fiction the skill of the writer is most conspicuously shown when the progress of the story is secured by natural and probable occurrences. Many events take place in history and in common life which good taste rejects as inadmissible in a work of imagination. Sudden death by disease or casualty is no very uncommon occurrence in real life; but it cannot be used in a novel to clear up a tangled web of circumstance, without betraying something of a poverty of invention in the writer. He is the best artist who makes least use of incidents which lie out of the beaten path of observation and experience. In constructive skill Cooper's rank is not high; for all his novels are more or less open to the criticism that too frequent use is made in them of events very unlikely to have happened. He leads his characters into such formidable perils that the chances are a million to one against their being rescued. Such a run is made upon our credulity that the fund is soon exhausted, and the bank stops payment.

For illustration of the above strictures we will refer to a single novel, "The Last of the Mohicans," which everybody will admit to be one of the most interesting of his works,—full of rapid movement, brilliant descriptions, hair-breadth escapes, thrilling adventures,—which young persons probably read with more rapt attention than any other of his narratives. In the opening chapter we find at Fort Edward, on the head-waters of the Hudson, the two daughters of Colonel Munro, the commander of Fort William Henry, on the shores of Lake George; though why they were at the former post, under the protection of a stranger, and not with their father, does not appear. Information is brought of the approach of Montcalm, with a hostile army of Indians and Frenchmen, from the North; and the young ladies are straightway hurried off to the more advanced, and consequently more dangerous post, when prudence and affection would have dictated just the opposite course. Nor is this all. General Webb, the commander of Fort Edward, at the urgent request of Colonel Munro, sends him a reinforcement of fifteen hundred men, who march off through the woods, by the military road, with drums beating and colors flying; and yet, strange to say, the young ladies do not accompany the troops, but set off, on the very same day, by a by-path, attended by no other escort than Major Heyward, and guided by an Indian whose fidelity is supposed to be assured by his having been flogged for drunkenness by the orders of Colonel Munro. The reason assigned for conduct so absurd that in real life it would have gone far to prove the parties having a hand in it not to be possessed of that sound and disposing mind and memory which the law requires as a condition precedent to making a will is, that hostile Indians, in search of chance scalps, would be hovering about the column of troops, and so leave the by-path unmolested. But the servants of the party follow the route of the column: a measure, we are told, dictated by the sagacity of the Indian guide, in order to diminish the marks of their trail, if, haply, the Canadian savages should be prowling about so far in advance of their army! Certainly, all the sagacity of the fort would seem to have been concentrated in the person of the Indian. How much of this improbability might have been avoided, if the action had been reversed, and the young ladies, in view of the gathering cloud of war, had been sent from the more exposed and less strongly guarded point of Fort William Henry to the safe fortress of Fort Edward! Then the smallness of the escort and the risks of the journey would have been explained and excused by the necessity of the case; and the subsequent events of the novel might have been easily accommodated to the change we have indicated.

One of the best of Cooper's novels—as a work of art perhaps the very best—is "The Bravo." But the character of Jacopo Frontoni is a sort of moral impossibility, and the clearing up of the mystery which hangs over his life and conduct, which is skilfully reserved to the last moment, is consequently unsatisfactory. He is represented as a young man of the finest qualities and powers, who, in the hope of rescuing a father who had been falsely imprisoned by the Senate, consents to assume the character, and bear the odium, of a public bravo, or assassin, though entirely innocent. This false position gives rise to many most effective scenes and incidents, and the character is in many respects admirably drawn. But when the end comes, we lay down the book and say,—"This could never have been: a virtuous and noble young man could not for years have been believed to be the most hateful of mankind; the laws of Nature and the laws of the human mind forbid it: so vast a web of falsehood could not have been woven without a flaw: we can credit much of the organized and pitiless despotism of Venice, but could it work miracles?"

Further illustrations of this same defect might easily be cited, if the task were not ungracious. Neither books, nor pictures, nor men and women should be judged by their defects. It is enough to say that Cooper never wrote a novel in regard to which the reader must not lay aside his critical judgment upon the structure of the story and the interdependence of the incidents, and let himself be borne along by the rapid flow of the narrative, without questioning too curiously as to the nature of the means and instruments employed to give movement to the stream.

In the delineation of character, Cooper may claim great, but not unqualified praise. This is a vague statement; and to draw a sharper line of discrimination, we should say that he is generally successful—sometimes admirably so—in drawing personages in whom strong primitive traits have not been effaced by the attritions of artificial life, and generally unsuccessful when he deals with those in whom the original characteristics are less marked, or who have been smoothed by education and polished by society. It is but putting this criticism in another form to say that his best characters are persons of humble social position. He wields his brush with a vigorous hand, but the brush itself has not a fine point. Of all the children of his brain, Natty Bumppo is the most universal favorite,—and herein the popular judgment is assuredly right. He is an original conception,—and not more happily conceived than skilfully executed. It was a hazardous undertaking to present the character backwards, and let us see the closing scenes of his life first,—like a Hebrew Bible, of which the beginning is at the end; but the author's genius has triumphed over the perils of the task, and given us a delineation as consistent and symmetrical as it is striking and vigorous. Ignorant of books, simple, and credulous, guileless himself, and suspecting no evil in others, with moderate intellectual powers, he commands our admiration and respect by his courage, his love of Nature, his skill in woodland lore, his unerring moral sense, his strong affections, and the veins of poetry that run through his rugged nature like seams of gold in quartz. Long Tom Coffin may be described as Leatherstocking suffered a sea-change,—with a harpoon instead of a rifle, and a pea-jacket instead of a hunting-shirt. In both the same primitive elements may be discerned: the same limited intellectual range combined with professional or technical skill; the same generous affections and unerring moral instincts; the same religious feeling, taking the form at times of fatalism or superstition. Long Tom's love of the sea is like Leatherstocking's love of the woods; the former's dislike of the land is like the latter's dislike of the clearings. Cooper himself, as we are told by his daughter, was less satisfied, in his last years, with Long Tom Coffin than most of his readers,—and, of the two characters, considered that of Boltrope the better piece of workmanship. We cannot assent to this comparative estimate; but we admit that Boltrope has not had full justice done to him in popular judgment. It is but a slight sketch, but it is extremely well done. His death is a bit of manly and genuine pathos; and in his conversations with the chaplain there is here and there a touch of true humor, which we value the more because humor was certainly not one of the author's best gifts.

Antonio, the old fisherman, in "The Bravo," is another very well drawn character, in which we can trace something of a family likeness to the hunter and sailor above mentioned. The scene in which he is shrived by the Carmelite monk, in his boat, under the midnight moon, upon the Lagoons, is one of the finest we know of in the whole range of the literature of fiction, leaving upon the mind a lasting impression of solemn and pathetic beauty. In "The Chainbearer," the Yankee squatter, Thousandacres, is a repulsive figure, but drawn with a powerful pencil. The energy of character, or rather of action, which is the result of a passionate love of money, is true to human nature. The closing scenes of his rough and lawless life, in which his latent affection for his faithful wife throws a sunset gleam over his hard and selfish nature, and prevents it from being altogether hateful, are impressively told, and are touched with genuine tragic power.

On the other hand, Cooper generally fails when he undertakes to draw a character which requires for its successful execution a nice observation and a delicate hand. His heroes and heroines are apt to abuse the privilege which such personages have enjoyed, time out of mind, of being insipid. Nor can he catch and reproduce the easy grace and unconscious dignity of high-bred men and women. His gentlemen, whether young or old, are apt to be stiff, priggish, and commonplace; and his ladies, especially his young ladies, are as deficient in individuality as the figures and faces of a fashion-print. Their personal and mental charms are set forth with all the minuteness of a passport; but, after all, we cannot but think that these fine creatures, with hair, brow, eyes, and lips of the most orthodox and approved pattern, would do very little towards helping one through a rainy day in a country-house. Judge Temple, in "The Pioneers," and Colonel Howard, in "The Pilot," are highly estimable and respectable gentlemen, but, in looking round for the materials of a pleasant dinner-party, we do not think they would stand very high on the list. They are fair specimens of their class,—the educated gentleman in declining life,—many of whom are found in the subsequent novels. They are wanting in those natural traits of individuality by which, in real life, one human being is distinguished from another. They are obnoxious to this one general criticism, that the author is constantly reminding us of the qualities of mind and character on which he rests their claims to favor, without causing them to appear naturally and unconsciously in the course of the narrative. The defect we are adverting to may be illustrated by comparing such personages of this class as Cooper has delineated with Colonel Talbot, in "Waverley," Colonel Mannering and Counsellor Pleydell, in "Guy Mannering," Monkbarns, in "The Antiquary," and old Osbaldistone, in "Rob Roy." These are all old men: they are all men of education, and in the social position of gentlemen; but each has certain characteristics which the others have not: each has the distinctive individual flavor-perceptible, but indescribable, like the savor of a fruit—which is wanting in Cooper's well-dressed and well-behaved lay-figures.

In the delineation of female loveliness and excellence Cooper is generally supposed to have failed,—at least, comparatively so. But in this respect full justice has hardly been done him; and this may be explained by the fact that it was from the heroines of his earlier novels that this unfavorable judgment was drawn. Certainly, such sticks of barley-candy as Frances Wharton, Cecilia Howard, and Alice Munro justify the common impression. But it would be as unfair to judge of what he can do in this department by his acknowledged failures as it would be to form an estimate of the genius of Michel Angelo from the easel-picture of the Virgin and Child in the Tribune at Florence. No man ever had a juster appreciation of, and higher reverence for, the worth of woman than Cooper. Towards women his manners were always marked by chivalrous deference, blended as to those of his own household with the most affectionate tenderness. His own nature was robust, self-reliant, and essentially masculine: such men always honor women, but they understand them better as they grow older. There is so much foundation for the saying, that men are apt to love their first wives best, but to treat their second wives best. Thus the reader who takes up his works in chronological order will perceive that the heroines of his later novels have more spirit and character, are drawn with a more discriminating touch, take stronger hold upon the interest, than those of his earlier. Ursula Malbone is a finer girl than Cecilia Howard, or even Elizabeth Temple. So when he has occasion to delineate a woman who, from her position in life, or the peculiar circumstances into which she is thrown, is moved by deeper springs of feeling, is obliged to put forth sterner energies, than are known to females reared in the sheltered air of prosperity and civilization,—when he paints the heart of woman roused by great perils, overborne by heavy sorrows, wasted by strong passions,—we recognize the same master-hand which has given us such powerful pictures of character in the other sex. In other words, Cooper is not happy in representing those shadowy and delicate graces which belong exclusively to woman, and distinguish her from man; but he is generally successful in sketching in woman those qualities which are found in both sexes. In "The Bravo," Donna Violetta, the heroine, a rich and high-born young lady, is not remarkable one way or the other; but Gelsomina, the jailer's daughter, born in an inferior position, reared in a sterner school of discipline and struggle, is a beautiful and consistent creation, constantly showing masculine energy and endurance, yet losing nothing of womanly charm. Ruth, in "The Wept of the Wish-ton-Wish," Hetty Hutter, the weak-minded and sound-hearted girl, in "The Deerslayer," Mabel Dunham, and the young Indian woman, "Dew of June," in "The Pathfinder," are further cases in point. No one can read the books in which these women are represented and say that Cooper was wanting in the power of delineating the finest and highest attributes of womanhood,

Cooper cannot be congratulated upon his success in the few attempts he has made to represent historical personages. Washington, as shown to us in "The Spy," is a formal piece of mechanism, as destitute of vital character as Maelzel's automaton trumpeter. This, we admit, was a very difficult subject, alike from the peculiar traits of Washington, and from the reverence in which his name and memory are held by his countrymen. But the sketch, in "The Pilot," of Paul Jones, a very different person, and a much easier subject, is hardly better. In both cases, the failure arises from the fact that the author is constantly endeavoring to produce the legitimate effect of mental and moral qualities by a careful enumeration of external attributes. Harper, under which name Washington is introduced, appears in only two or three scenes; but, during these, we hear so much of the solemnity and impressiveness of his manner, the gravity of his brow, the steadiness of his gaze, that we get the notion of a rather oppressive personage, and sympathize with the satisfaction of the Whartons, when he retires to his own room, and relieves them of his tremendous presence. Mr. Gray, who stands for Paul Jones, is more carefully elaborated, but the result is far from satisfactory. We are so constantly told of his calmness and abstraction, of his sudden starts and bursts of feeling, of his low voice, of his fits of musing, that the aggregate impression is that of affectation and self-consciousness, rather than of a simple, passionate, and heroic nature. Mr. Gray does not seem to us at all like the rash, fiery, and dare-devil Scotchman of history. His conduct and conversation, as recounted in the fifth chapter of the novel, are unnatural and improbable; and we cannot wonder that the first lieutenant did not know what to make of so melodramatic and sententious a gentleman, in the guise of a pilot.

Cooper, as we need hardly say, has drawn copiously upon Indian life and character for the materials of his novels; and among foreign nations much of his reputation is due to this fact. Civilized men and women always take pleasure in reading about the manners and habits of savage life; and those in whom the shows of things are submitted to the desires of the mind delight to invest them with those ideal qualities which they do not find, or think they do not, in the artificial society around them. Cooper had enjoyed no peculiar opportunities of studying by personal observation the characteristics of the Indian race, but he had undoubtedly read everything he could get hold of in illustration of the subject. No one can question the vividness and animation of his sketches, or their brilliant tone of color. He paints with a pencil dipped in the glow of our sunset skies and the crimson of our autumn maples. Whenever he brings Indians upon the stage, we may be sure that scenes of thrilling interest are before us: that rifles are to crack, tomahawks to gleam, and arrows to dart like sunbeams through the air; that a net of peril is to be drawn around his hero or heroine, from the meshes of which he or she is to be extricated by some unexpected combination of fortunate circumstances. We expect a succession of startling incidents, and a rapid course of narrative without pauses or languid intervals. We do not object to his idealizing his Indians: this is the privilege of the novelist, time out of mind. He may make them swift of foot, graceful in movement, and give them a form like the Apollo's; he may put as much expression as he pleases into their black eyes; he may tessellate their speech as freely as he will with poetical and figurative expressions, drawn from the aspects of the external world: for all this there is authority, and chapter and verse may be cited in support of it. But we have a right to ask that he shall not transcend the bounds of reason and possibility, and represent his red men as moved by motives and guided by sentiments which are wholly inconsistent with the inexorable facts of the case. We confess to being a little more than skeptical as to the Indian of poetry and romance: like the German's camel, he is evolved from the depth of the writer's own consciousness. The poet takes the most delicate sentiments and the finest emotions of civilization and cultivation, and grafts them upon the best qualities of savage life; which is as if a painter should represent an oak-tree bearing roses. The life of the North-American Indian, like that of all men who stand upon the base-line of civilization, is a constant struggle, and often a losing struggle, for mere subsistence. The sting of animal wants is his chief motive of action, and the full gratification of animal wants his highest ideal of happiness. The "noble savage," as sketched by poets, weary of the hollowness, the insincerity, and the meanness of artificial life, is really a very ignoble creature, when seen in the "open daylight" of truth. He is selfish, sensual, cruel, indolent, and impassive. The highest graces of character, the sweetest emotions, the finest sensibilities,—which make up the novelist's stock in trade,—are not and cannot be the growth of a so-called state of Nature, which is an essentially unnatural state. We no more believe that Logan ever made the speech reported by Jefferson, in so many words, than we believe that Chatham ever made the speech in reply to Walpole which begins with, "The atrocious crime of being a young man"; though we have no doubt that the reporters in both cases had something fine and good to start from. We accept with acquiescence, nay, with admiration, such characters as Magua, Chingachgook, Susquesus, Tamenund, and Canonchet; but when we come to Uncas, in "The Last of the Mohicans," we pause and shake our heads with incredulous doubt. That a young Indian chief should fall in love with a handsome quadroon like Cora Munro—for she was neither more nor less than that—is natural enough; but that he should manifest his passion with such delicacy and refinement is impossible. We include under one and the same name all the affinities and attractions of sex, but the appetite of the savage differs from the love of the educated and civilized man as much as charcoal differs from the diamond. The sentiment of love, as distinguished from the passion, is one of the last and best results of Christianity and civilization: in no one thing does savage life differ from civilized more than in the relations between man and woman, and in the affections that unite them. Uncas is a graceful and beautiful image; but he is no Indian.

We turn now to a more gracious part of our task, and proceed to say something of the many striking excellences which distinguish Cooper's writings, and have given him such wide popularity. Popularity is but one test of merit, and not the highest,—gauging popularity by the number of readers, at any one time, irrespective of their taste and judgment. In this sense, "The Scottish Chiefs" and "Thaddeus of Warsaw" were once as popular as any of the Waverley Novels. But Cooper's novels have enduring merit, and will surely keep their place in the literature of the language. The manners, habits, and costumes of England have greatly changed during the last hundred years; but Richardson and Fielding are still read. We must expect corresponding changes in this country during the next century; but we may confidently predict that in the year 1962 young and impressible hearts will be saddened at the fate of Uncas and Cora, and exult when Captain Munson's frigate escapes from the shoals.

A few pages back we spoke of Cooper's want of skill in the structure of his plots, and his too frequent recurrence to improbable incidents to help on the course of his stories. But most readers care little about this defect, provided the writer betrays no poverty of invention, and succeeds in making his narratives interesting. Herein Cooper never lays himself open to that instinctive and unconscious criticism, which is the only kind an author need dread, because from it there is no appeal. It is bad to have a play hissed down, but it is worse to have it yawned down. But over Cooper's pages his readers never yawn. They never break down in the middle of one of his stories. The fortunes of his characters are followed with breathless and accumulating interest to the end. In vain does the dinner-bell sound, or the clock strike the hour of bed-time: the book cannot be laid down till we know whether Elizabeth Temple is to get out of the woods without being burned alive, or solve the mystery that hangs over the life of Jacopo Frontoni. He has in ample measure that paramount and essential merit in a novelist of fertility of invention. The resources of his genius, alike in the devising of incidents and the creation of character, are inexhaustible. His scenes are laid on the sea and in the forest,—in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain,—amid the refinements and graces of civilization and the rudeness and hardships of frontier and pioneer life; but everywhere he moves with an easy and familiar tread, and everywhere, though there may be the motive and the cue for minute criticism, we recognize the substantial truth of his pictures. In all his novels the action is rapid and the movement animated: his incidents may not be probable, but they crowd upon each other so thickly that we have not time to raise the question: before one impression has become familiar, the scene changes, and new objects enchain the attention. All rapid motion is exhilarating alike to mind and body; and in reading Cooper's novels we feel a pleasure analogous to that which stirs the blood when we drive a fast horse or sail with a ten-knot breeze. This fruitfulness in the invention of incidents is nearly as important an element in the composition of a novelist as a good voice in that of a singer. A powerful work of fiction may be produced by a writer who has not this gift; but such works address a comparatively limited public. To the common mind no faculty in the novelist is so fascinating as this. "Caleb Williams" is a story of remarkable power; but "Ivanhoe" has a thousand readers to its one.

In estimating novelists by the number and variety of characters with which they have enriched the repertory of fiction, Cooper's place, if not the highest, is very high. The fruitfulness of his genius in this regard is kindred to its fertility in the invention of incidents. We can pardon in a portrait-gallery of such extent here and there an ill-drawn figure or a face wanting in expression. With the exception of Scott, and perhaps of Dickens, what writer of prose fiction has created a greater number of characters such as stamp themselves upon the memory so that an allusion to them is well understood in cultivated society? Fielding has drawn country squires, and Smollett has drawn sailors; but neither has intruded upon the domain of the other, nor could he have made the attempt without failure. Some of our living novelists have a limited list of characters; they have half a dozen types which we recognize as inevitably as we do the face and voice of an actor in the king, the lover, the priest, or the bandit: but Cooper is not a mere mannerist, perpetually copying from himself. His range is very wide: it includes white men, red men, and black men,—sailors, hunters, and soldiers,—lawyers, doctors, and clergymen,—past generations and present,—Europeans and Americans,—civilized and savage life. All his delineations are not successful; some are even unsuccessful: but the aberrations of his genius must be viewed in connection with the extent of the orbit through which it moves. The courage which led him to expose himself to so many risks of failure is itself a proof of conscious power.

Cooper's style has not the ease, grace, and various power of Scott's,—or the racy, idiomatic character of Thackeray's,—or the exquisite purity and transparency of Hawthorne's: but it is a manly, energetic style, in which we are sure to find good words, if not the best. It has certain wants, but it has no marked defects; if it does not always command admiration, it never offends. It has not the highest finish; it sometimes betrays carelessness: but it is the natural garb in which a vigorous mind clothes its conceptions. It is the style of a man who writes from a full mind, without thinking of what he is going to say; and this is in itself a certain kind of merit. His descriptive powers are of a high order. His love of Nature was strong; and, as is generally the case with intellectual men, it rather increased than diminished as he grew older. It was not the meditative and self-conscious love of a sensitive spirit, that seeks in communion with the outward world a relief from the burdens and struggles of humanity, but the hearty enjoyment of a thoroughly healthy nature, the schoolboy's sense of a holiday dwelling in a manly breast. His finest passages are those in which he presents the energies and capacities of humanity in combination with striking or beautiful scenes in Nature. His genius, which sometimes moves with "compulsion and laborious flight" when dealing with artificial life and the manners and speech of cultivated men, and women, here recovers all its powers, and sweeps and soars with victorious and irresistible wing. The breeze from the sea, the fresh air and wide horizon of the prairies, the noonday darkness of the forest are sure to animate his drooping energies, and breathe into his mind the inspiration of a fresh life. Here he is at home, and in his congenial element: he is the swan on the lake, the eagle in the air, the deer in the woods. The escape of the frigate, in the fifth chapter of "The Pilot," is a well-known passage of this kind; and nothing can be finer. The technical skill, the poetical feeling, the rapidity of the narrative, the distinctness of the details, the vividness of the coloring, the life, power, and animation which breathe and burn in every line, make up a combination of the highest order of literary merit. It is as good a sea-piece as the best of Turner's; and we cannot give it higher praise. We hear the whistling of the wind through the rigging, and the roar of the pitiless sea, bellowing for its prey; we see the white caps of the waves flashing with spectral light through the darkness, and the gallant ship whirled along like a bubble by the irresistible current; we hold our breath as we read of the expedients and manoeuvres which most of us but half understand, and heave a long sigh of relief when the danger is past, and the ship reaches the open sea. A similar passage, though of more quiet and gentler beauty, is the description of the deer-chase on the lake, in the twenty-seventh chapter of "The Pioneers." Indeed, this whole novel is full of the finest expressions of the author's genius. Into none of his works has he put more of the warmth of personal feeling and the glow of early recollection. His own heart beats through every line. The fresh breezes of the morning of life play round its pages, and its unexhaled dew hangs upon them. It is colored throughout with the rich hues of sympathetic emotion. All that is attractive in pioneer life is reproduced with substantial truth; but the pictures are touched with those finer lights which time pours over the memories of childhood. With what spirit and power all the characteristic incidents and scenes of a new settlement are described,—pigeon-shooting, bass-fishing, deer-hunting, the making of maple-sugar, the turkey-shooting at Christmas, the sleighing-parties in winter! How distinctly his landscapes are painted,—the deep, impenetrable forest, the gleaming lake, the crude aspect and absurd architecture of the new-born village! How full of poetry in the ore is the conversation of Leatherstocking! The incongruities and peculiarities of social life which are the result of a sudden rush of population into the wilderness are also well sketched; though with a pencil less free and vivid than that with which he paints the aspects of Nature and the movements of natural man. As respects the structure of the story, and the probability of the incidents, the novel is open to criticism; but such is the fascination that hangs over it, that it is impossible to criticize. To do this would be as ungracious as to correct the language and pronunciation of an old friend who revives by his conversation the fading memories of school-boy and college life.

Cooper would have been a better writer, if he had had more of the quality of humor, and a keener sense of the ridiculous; for these would have saved him from his too frequent practice of introducing both into his narrative and his conversations, but more often into the latter, scraps of commonplace morality, and bits of sentiment so long worn as to have lost all their gloss. In general, his genius does not appear to advantage in dialogue. His characters have not always a due regard to the brevity of human life. They make long speeches, preach dull sermons, and ventilate very self-evident propositions with great solemnity of utterance. Their discourse wants not only compression, but seasoning. They are sometimes made to talk in such a way that the force of caricature can hardly go farther. For instance, in "The Pioneers," Judge Temple, coming into a room in his house, and seeing a fire of maple-logs, exclaims to Richard Jones, his kinsman and factotum,—"How often have I forbidden the use of the sugar-maple in my dwelling! The sight of that sap, as it exudes with the heat, is painful to me, Richard." And in another place, he is made to say to his daughter,—"Remember the heats of July, my daughter; nor venture farther than thou canst retrace before the meridian." We may be sure that no man of woman born, in finding fault about the burning of maple-logs, ever talked of the sap's "exuding"; or, when giving a daughter a caution against walking too far, ever translated getting home before noon into "retracing before the meridian." This is almost as bad as Sir Piercie Shafton's calling the cows "the milky mothers of the herds."

So, too, a lively perception of the ludicrous would have saved Cooper from certain peculiarities of phrase and awkwardnesses of expression, frequently occurring in his novels, such as might easily slip from the pen in the rapidity of composition, but which we wonder should have been overlooked in the proof-sheet. A few instances will illustrate our meaning. In the elaborate description of the personal charms of Cecilia Howard, in the tenth chapter of "The Pilot," we are told of "a small hand which seemed to blush at its own naked beauties." In "The Pioneers," speaking of the head and brow of Oliver Edwards, he says,—"The very air and manner with which the member haughtily maintained itself over the coarse and even wild attire," etc. In "The Bravo," we read,—"As the stranger passed, his glittering organs rolled over the persons of the gondolier and his companion," etc.; and again, in the same novel,—"The packet was received calmly, though the organ which glanced at its seal," etc. In "The Last of the Mohicans," the complexion of Cora appears "charged with the color of the rich blood that seemed ready to burst its bounds." These are but trivial faults; and if they had not been so easily corrected, it would have been hypercriticism to notice them.

Every author in the department of imaginative literature, whether of prose or verse, puts more or less of his personal traits of mind and character into his writings. This is very true of Cooper; and much of the worth and popularity of his novels is to be ascribed to the unconscious expressions and revelations they give of the estimable and attractive qualities of the man. Bryant, in his admirably written and discriminating biographical sketch, originally pronounced as a eulogy, and now prefixed to "Precaution" in Townsend's edition, relates that a distinguished man of letters, between whom and Cooper an unhappy coolness had for some time existed, after reading "The Pathfinder," remarked,—"They may say what they will of Cooper, the man who wrote this book is not only a great man, but a good man." This is a just tribute; and the impression thus made by a single work is confirmed by all. Cooper's moral nature was thoroughly sound, and all his moral instincts were right. His writings show in how high regard he held the two great guardian virtues of courage in man and purity in woman. In all his novels we do not recall a single expression of doubtful morality. He never undertakes to enlist our sympathies on the wrong side. If his good characters are not always engaging, he never does violence to virtue by presenting attractive qualities in combination with vices which in real life harden the heart and coarsen the taste. We do not find in his pages those moral monsters in which the finest sensibilities, the richest gifts, the noblest sentiments are linked to heartless profligacy, or not less heartless misanthropy. He never palters with right; he enters into no truce with wrong; he admits of no compromise on such points. How admirable in its moral aspect is the character of Leatherstocking! he is ignorant, and of very moderate intellectual range or grasp; but what dignity, nay, even grandeur, is thrown around him from his noble moral qualities,—his undeviating rectitude, his disinterestedness, his heroism, his warm affections! No writer could have delineated such a character so well who had not an instinctive and unconscious sympathy with his intellectual offspring. Praise of the same kind belongs to Long Tom Coffin, and Antonio, the old fisherman. The elements of character—truth, courage, and affection—are the same in all. Harvey Birch and Jacopo Frontoni are kindred conceptions: both are in a false relation to those around them; both assume a voluntary load of obloquy; both live and move in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust; but in both the end sanctifies and exalts the means; the element of deception in both only adds to the admiration finally awakened. The carrying out of conceptions like these—the delineation of a character that perpetually weaves a web of untruth, and yet through all maintains our respect, and at last secures our reverence—was no easy task; but Cooper's success is perfect.

Cooper was fortunate in having been born with a vigorous constitution, and in having kept through life the blessing of robust health. He never suffered from remorse of the stomach or protest of the brain; and his writings are those of a man who always digested his dinner and never had a headache. His novels, like those of Scott, are full of the breeze and sunshine of health. They breathe of manly tastes, active habits, sound sleep, a relish for simple pleasures, temperate enjoyments, and the retention in manhood of the fresh susceptibilities of youth. His genius is thoroughly masculine. He is deficient in acute perception, in delicate discrimination, in fine analysis, in the skill to seize and arrest exceptional peculiarities; but he has in large measure the power to present the broad characteristics of universal humanity. It is to this power that he owes his wide popularity. At this moment, in every public and circulating library in England or America, the novels of Cooper will be found to be in constant demand. He wrote for the many, and not for the few; he hit the common mind between wind and water; a delicate and fastidious literary appetite may not be attracted to his productions, but the healthy taste of the natural man finds therein food alike convenient and savory.

In a manly, courageous, somewhat impulsive nature like Cooper's we should expect to find prejudices; and he was a man of strong prejudices. Among others, was an antipathy to the people of New England. His characters, male and female, are frequently Yankees, but they are almost invariably caricatures; that is, they have all the unamiable characteristics and unattractive traits which are bestowed upon the people of New England by their ill-wishers. Had he ever lived among them, with his quick powers of observation and essentially kindly judgment of men and life, he could not have failed to correct his misapprehensions, and to perceive that he had taken the reverse side of the tapestry for the face.

Cooper, with a very keen sense of injustice, conscious of inexhaustible power, full of vehement impulses, and not largely endowed with that safe quality called prudence, was a man likely to get involved in controversies. It was his destiny, and he never could have avoided it, to be in opposition to the dominant public sentiment around him. Had he been born in Russia, he could hardly have escaped a visit to Siberia; had he been born in Austria, he would have wasted some of his best years in Spielberg. Under a despotic government he would have been a vehement Republican; in a Catholic country he would have been the most uncompromising of Protestants. He had full faith in the institutions of his own country; and his large heart, hopeful temperament, and robust soul made him a Democrat; but his democracy had not the least tinge of radicalism. He believed that man had a right to govern himself, and that he was capable of self-government; but government, the subordination of impulse to law, he insisted upon as rigorously as the veriest monarchist or aristocrat in Christendom. He would have no authority that was not legitimate; but he would tolerate no resistance to legitimate authority. All his sentiments, impulses, and instincts were those of a gentleman; and vulgar manners, coarse habits, and want of respect for the rights of others were highly offensive to him. When in Europe, he resolutely, and at no little expense of time and trouble, defended America from unjust imputations and ignorant criticism; and when at home, with equal courage and equal energy, he breasted the current of public Opinion where he deemed it to be wrong, and resisted those most formidable invasions of right, wherein the many combine to oppress the one. His long controversy with the press was too important an episode in his life to be passed over by us without mention; though our limits will not permit us to make anything more than a passing allusion to it. The opinion which will be formed upon Cooper's course in this matter will depend, in a considerable degree, upon the temperament of the critic. Timid men, cautious men, men who love their ease, will call him Quixotic, rash, imprudent, to engage in a controversy in which he had much to lose and little to gain; but the reply to such suggestions is, that, if men always took counsel of indolence, timidity, and selfishness, no good would ever be accomplished, and no abuses ever be reformed. Cooper may not have been judicious in everything he said and did; but that he was right in the main, both in motive and conduct, we firmly believe. He acted from a high sense of duty; there was no alloy of vindictiveness or love of money in the impulses which moved him. Criticism the most severe and unsparing he accepted as perfectly allowable, so long as it kept within the limits of literary judgment; but any attack upon his personal character, especially any imputation or insinuation involving a moral stain, he would not submit to. He appealed to the laws of the land to vindicate his reputation and punish his assailants. Long and gallant was the warfare he maintained,—a friendless, solitary warfare,—and all the hydra-heads of the press hissing and ejaculating their venom upon him,—with none to stand by his side and wish him God-speed. But he persevered, and, what is more, he succeeded: that, is to say, he secured all the substantial fruits of success. He vindicated the principle for which he contended: he compelled the newspapers to keep within the pale of literary criticism; he confirmed the saying of President Jackson, that "desperate courage makes one a majority."

Two of his novels, "Homeward Bound" and "Home as Found," bear a strong infusion of the feelings which led to his contest with the press. After the publication of these, he became much interested in the well-known Anti-Rent agitation by which the State of New York was so long shaken; and three of his novels, "Satanstoe," "The Chainbearer," and "The Redskins," forming one continuous narrative, were written with reference to this subject. Many professed novel-readers are, we suspect, repelled from these books, partly because of this continuity of the story, and partly because they contain a moral; but we assure them, that, if on these grounds they pass them by, they lose both pleasure and profit. They are written with all the vigor and spirit of his prime; they have many powerful scenes and admirably drawn characters; the pictures of colonial life and manners in "Satanstoe" are animated and delightful; and in all the legal and ethical points for which the author contends he is perfectly right. In his Preface to "The Chainbearer" he says,—"In our view, New York is at this moment a disgraced State; and her disgrace arises from the fact that her laws are trampled under foot, without any efforts—at all commensurate with the object—being made to enforce them." That any commonwealth is a disgraced State against which such charges can with truth be made no one will deny; and any one who is familiar with the history of that wretched business will agree, that, at the time it was made, the charge was not too strong. Who can fail to admire the courage of the man who ventured to write and print such a judgment as the above against a State of which he was a native, a citizen, and a resident, and in which the public sentiment was fiercely the other way? Here, too, Cooper's motives were entirely unselfish: he had almost no pecuniary interest in the question of Anti-Rentism; he wrote all in honor, unalloyed by thrift. His very last novel, "The Ways of the Hour," is a vigorous exposition of the defects of the trial by jury in cases where a vehement public sentiment has already tried the question, and condemned the prisoner. The story is improbable, and the leading character is an impossible being; but the interest is kept up to the end,—it has many most impressive scenes,—it abounds with shrewd and sound observations upon life, manners, and politics,—and all the legal portion is stamped with an acuteness and fidelity to truth which no professional reader can note without admiration.