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——‘in all time,
Calm or convulsed–in breeze, or gale, or storm;
….Boundless, endless, and sublime–
The image of Eternity–the throne
Of the Invisible.’

Well might one who had lived six years on her swelling bosom, combine with his love ‘of the old sea some reverential fear,’ as Wordsworth has it. This compound feeling is highly effective in his marine fictions, so instinct is it with the reality of personal experience. Mr Griswold tells us that Cooper informed him as follows of the origin of The Pilot: ‘Talking with the late Charles Wilkes of New York, a man of taste and judgment, our author [Cooper] heard extolled the universal knowledge of Scott, and the sea-portions of The Pirate cited as a proof. He laughed at the idea, as most seamen would, and the discussion ended by his promising to write a sea-story which could be read by landsmen, while seamen should feel its truth. The Pilot was the result of that conversation.'[Footnote: ‘The Prose-Writers of America.’] Of this tale Scott says, in a letter to Miss Edgeworth: ‘I have seen a new work, The Pilot, by the author of The Spy and The Pioneers. The hero is the celebrated Paul Jones, whom I well remember advancing above the island of Inchkeith, with three small vessels, to lay Leith under contribution…. The novel is a very clever one, and the sea-scenes and characters in particular are admirably drawn; and I advise you to read it as soon as possible.’ Still higher panegyric would not have been misbestowed in this instance, which illustrates Mr Prescott’s remark, that Cooper’s descriptions of inanimate nature, no less than of savage man, are alive with the breath of poetry–‘Witness his infinitely various pictures of the ocean; or, still more, of the beautiful spirit that rides upon its bosom, the gallant ship.’ Though it is to The Pilot, pre-eminently, and The Waterwitch, in nearly an equal degree, that these remarks apply, there is many a passage in Cooper’s later novels–for example, The Two Admirals, Homeward Bound, Mark’s Reef, Ashore and Afloat, and The Sea-Lions–in which we recognise the same ‘cunning’ right hand which pencilled the Ariel, and its crew, the moody, mysterious pilot, and stalwart Long Tom Coffin.

Nor was he less at home in the backwoods and prairies of his fatherland, than upon the broad seas which divide it from the Old World. Tastes differ; and there are those–possibly the majority of his readers–who prefer the Indian associations of The Last of the Mohicans, The Pioneers, etc. to the salt-water scenery of the other class of works. For our part, we prefer his prairies to his savages, his forests to his aborigines, his inanimate to his living sketches of Indian story. His wild men of the woods are often too sentimental, too dreamy, too ideal. In this respect Brockden Brown has the advantage of him; for, as Mr Prescott has pointed out, Brown shews the rude and uncouth lineaments of the Indian character, though he is chargeable with withholding intimations of a more generous nature. While Cooper discards all the coarser elements of savage life, and idealises the portrait. The first of this series of tales of

‘Painted chiefs with pointed spears,’

was The Pioneers–the materials for which, it seems, were to a considerable extent derived from his father, who had an interest in large tracts of land near the ‘sources of the Susquehanna,’ where the scene is laid, and allied, therefore, to Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming. It was speedily followed by The Last of the Mohicans–not uncommonly pronounced his chef d’oeuvre–and The Prairie; which, among numerous descriptions of absorbing interest, pervaded throughout by a fine imaginative spirit, contains one of thrilling power–where the squatter discovers and avenges the murder of his son. The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish–a strange story with a strange title, and which forms (chronologically at least) the climax of Cooper’s fame–is justly admired by all who appreciate ‘minute painting,’ and that pensive monotony which begets a certain ‘melancholy charm.’ His skill in martial narrative was favorably attested in Lionel Lincoln; in which he describes with remarkable spirit and equal accuracy the battles of Lexington and of Bunker’s Hill. But to go through in detail the opera omnia of our prolific author would involve us in difficulties with editor and reader too serious to bear anticipation. Passing over, therefore, such of his earlier writings as are better known–like The Red Rover, The Waterwitch, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer–we proceed to notice briefly a select few from the long series produced during the last ten years.