Engrared by Thomson from Criginal Frawing 27 J. Fevimon Coope London Published in the New Monthly Man! by Colton & Bentley April 1831 sublimity; to paint its scenery; to exult in its acquirements and prospects; but, above all, to assert its glory and independence. He thus stood, like another Columbus, on the ground he had discovered, and perceived that it was untrodden. He saw, also, the fertility of the paths upon which he entered, the inexhaustible variety of the materials that presented themselves to him upon every side. Every thing was novel and picturesque. What other histories enjoyed in antiquity, that of America had in modern interest. If the register of its triumphs was but of recent date, it was prolific in adventures. Every page of the volume was full of matter, and all that was required was to select with taste and discrimination. With the freshness of character which thus appertained to his subjects generally, and with powers of mind that would have given interest to subjects of a far less original description, it was almost a matter of course that Mr. Cooper should have succeeded in at once rising into estimation among his own countrymen, and scarcely more surprising that his first works should have been received and read in England as the productions of a man of very remarkable genius. There are some points of fiction that the most prejudiced eyes cannot resist, however they may persevere in keeping themselves closed to the truth; and though the aristocratic might not relish the scene the better for being laid within the territory of the United States, or lament with any immoderate degree of emphasis over sorrows that had been suffered on the other side of the Atlantic; yet few found it politic to deny, what was indeed palpable to all, that Mr. Cooper was gifted with talents that would contribute to strengthen and extend the independence of his country; to give it what it required, a literary independence, and add intellectual freedom to the religious and political liberty which it enjoyed. Few could command the tide of sympathy to roll back and retire, or check the course of emotions that a delineation of Nature had inspired; and it was therefore not thought advisable, even among those who looked lamentingly upon the cessation of hostilities and the growing good understanding between the two countries, to extend the ridicule with which the laws and institutions of America had been frequently visited to these specimens of her literary advancement, or to dispute her claim to the possession of Goldsmiths and Fieldings of her own. If some portion of the success of our Trans-Atlantic Novelist was referable to circumstances, and to the peculiar attractiveness of his subjects, a still greater portion was attributable to himself, and to the energy and enthusiasm which he brought to his labours. No writer of the times has taken a wider range in his view of human nature, or looked more deeply into the heart. Few know better how to seize the strongest point of interest, and no one can work it out more judiciously. If his plots fail in carrying you irresistibly along "on the wings of the wind," his skill in the delineation of character is sure to work its charm and fascination about you; or, if even that should fail, the mere description of some unromantic settlement in the woods, a desert solitude, or the hull of a vessel floating "Far out amid the melancholy main;" nay, of things less picturesque than these, would prevent you from closing the book until you had read to the last line of the last page. We never met with novels (and we have read all that were ever written since the creation of the world,)—of a more absorbing character, or more fatal to the female propensity of skipping the digressive portions. Every word of Mr. Cooper's narratives is effective, or appears so while you read: and yet he does not scruple to describe an object, in the most elaborate and uncompromising terms, three or four times over in the same work, if it be necessary that the reader should have an accurate outline of it before his eyes. There is a profusion, but no waste of words, in his style, which is, "without o'erflowing, full." It is clear, varied, and distinct. He paints the wild waste, "the sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses," the verdureless prairie, and the mighty shadows of the forest, with a power that increases in fervour and swells into enthusiasm when he launches upon the element of which he has given such fearful yet such faithful pictures. His sea-scenes are unique. He does not give you a painted ship upon a painted ocean." All is action, character, and poetry. You see, in the images which he conjures up, every accessory of the scene, however insignificant; you hear, in the terms in which he describes them, the roaring of the surge, the voices of the seamen, and the flapping of the sails. Amidst such scenes as these, where "His march is o'er the mountain-waves, His home is on the deep," 66 we lose sight of land altogether; and are startled, a few chapters farther on, at finding ourselves in a wild, barren, wintry region, the antipodes of that we had left. His characters are of all classes, and if not equally well drawn, impress us, at the first glance, with a conviction that they are drawn by an acute observer of life, and a lover of the kindlier sympathies that adorn and ennoble it. There are many touches in Mr. Cooper's books that have been put in with a liberal hand, denoting a warmth and generosity of spirit towards his species, a desire to encourage and not to depress human nature, to exhibit but not to exult in its vices, and to inculcate a better and brighter philosophy than that which never looks for light out of its own circle, and keeps its charity perpetually at home. These indications of good feeling, wherever we meet them, besides making the portrait more perfect, make us love and remember it for ever. His characters, whether modern or oldfashioned, savage or civilized, moving on the quarter-deck or the wilderness, are all picturesque persons, that have some mark and likelihood about them. There is a mixture of the poetic and the plausible in them, that renders it difficult to determine whether they are to be taken as inventions or realities, or compounds, as most of them are, of both. This may be said of them in general, that if they are sometimes grotesque when they ought to be graceful, and extravagant where simplicity was most needed, they are seldom or never insipid. They preserve their glow and bloom to the last; and when they seem to be wandering farthest from the point of Nature, to which we would bind them, come back to us with one of those touches that "makes the whole world kin," and reveal to us the truth and beauty which had been previously hidden by the very excess of our sympathy. There is scarcely one charácter of any rank or importance that does not present some indication of this deep knowledge of our nature, in the finest of its forms; and there are many, in the range of his productions, that are conceived in the very spirit of that knowledge. And as it is difficult to select instances from the cloud of creatures,-composed alike of the high and the humble, the stern-featured and the humorous,- that comes floating upon our recollection, we would instance a whole class, and refer to the refined power and delicacy which he has displayed in his delineation of the female character. There is at times (let it be said with reverence) an almost Shaksperian subtlety of perception in his female pictures-a majesty, and yet a gentleness, not unworthy of the highest mind, while contemplating the holiest objects that Nature has fashioned. They are not beings of the imagination, but children of Nature-not creatures "playing i' the plighted clouds," but scattering light and comfort upon the earth to the uttermost ends of it, and showing that there is no situation of life into which beauty and gladness will not penetrate at last. All Mr. Cooper's feminine creations may not have been to Court; but they have not the less lustre and dignity on that account; nor does he agree with Touchstone, that they will be condemned for the omission. They are enveloped in graces that are seldom dreamed of in drawing-rooms. We could count up a dozen of these spiritualities at least. Content Heathcote's wife-we forget the name-in "The Borderers," though with little outward brilliancy or gaudiness of colouring, is a fine conception, wonderfully wrought out. It brings to mind-and this is the highest eulogy we can pass upon it-that " phantom of delight" of Wordsworth-a being that, however beautiful, is "Not too good For human nature's daily food ;-" Or to complete the comparison, and to give our meaning its proper music, "A perfect woman, nobly planned We had just finished our quotation, when a friend entered, whose opinions are worth seeking, and to whom we occasionally refer. We told him our views upon the subject—and asked him his opinion of our novelist. "I will tell you," he said, "if you will be bold enough to write what I say." Here are his words, at variance, in places, with what we had previously written, but given without change. "Of all the novels of Cooper, that which pleases me most is 'The Last of the Mohicans.' In his other works there are many fine passages, and indeed whole chapters full of beauty and character, and life. But then these seem off-sets from the great British familythe stamp of an original spirit is not upon them, and we compare them with Smollet and Fielding, and Scott, and lean to the authors of Old England. In The Last of the Mohicans' the original spirit of the man shines out-the march of the great American wilderness is upon it—the full and distinct image of the desert-born is there, and we confess at once the presence of something which stands aloof and alone-and resembles nothing which any other genius has done. I say not this for the purpose of depreciating the other works of the |