ican savage somewhat idealized, but not the less a part of the wild nature in which they have their haunts." Its pioneers lived “in a sort of primitive and patriarchal barbarism, sluggish on ordinary occasions but terrible when roused, like the hurricane that sweeps the grand but monotonous wilderness" in which they dwelt-a "natural growth of those ancient fields of the west." Leather-Stocking was "no less in harmony with the silent desert" in which he wandered. He was and is "a philosopher of the woods, ignorant of books, but instructed in all that nature, without the aid of science, could reveal to the man of quick senses and inquiring intellect, whose life has been passed under the open sky, and in companionship with a race whose animal perceptions are the acutest and most cultivated of which there is any example. But Leather-Stocking has higher qualities; in him there is a genial blending of the gentlest virtues of the civilized man with the better nature of the aboriginal tribes; all that in them is noble, generous, and ideal, is adopted into his own kindly character, and all that is evil is rejected. But why should I attempt to analyze a character so familiar? Leather-Stocking is acknowledged, on all hands, to be one of the noblest, as well as most striking and original creations of fiction. In some of his subsequent novels, Cooper-for he had not yet attained to the full maturity of his powers-heightened and ennobled his first conception of the character, but

in The Pioneers' it dazzled the world with the splendor of novelty."

A national nov

elist of international fame.

In his peroration, which, as usual in eulogistic oratory, was too glowingly enthusiastic in its tributes and prophecies, Bryant found in the many translations of Cooper some portent that his works might thereby survive. the language in which they were written. This speculative compliment need not detain our attention, for the succeeding quarter of a century has shown that English is to be-nay, is -the dominant language of the world, and that its distributing centre, at least as regards numbers of speakers and readers, is to pass to the nation of which Cooper chiefly wrote. Said Bryant: "In that way of writing in which he excelled, it seems to me that he united, in a pre-eminent degree, those qualities which enabled him to interest the largest number of readers. He wrote not for the fastidious, the over-refined, the morbidly delicate; for these find in his genius something too robust for their liking-something by which their sensibilities are too rudely shaken; but he wrote for mankind at large-for men and women in the ordinary healthful state of feeling— and in their admiration he found his reward. .

Hence it is that he has earned a fame wider, I think than any author of modern times-wider, certainly, than any author of any age ever enjoyed in his lifetime. All his excellencies are translatable they pass readily into languages the least allied in their genius to that in which he

wrote, and in them he touches the heart and kindles the imagination with the same power as in the original English. . . . . Such are the works so widely read, and so universally admired in all the zones of the globe, and by men of every kindred and every tongue; works which have made. of those who dwell in remote latitudes, wanderers in our forests and observers of our manners, and have inspired them with an interest in our history. Over all the countries into whose speech this great man's works have been rendered by the labors of their scholars, the sorrow of that loss which we deplore is now diffusing itself. Here we lament the ornament of our country, there they mourn the death of him who delighted the human race. . . . . The creations of his genius, fixed in living words, survive the frail material organs by which the words were first traced. They partake of a middle nature, between the deathless mind and the decaying body of which they are the common offspring, and are therefore destined to a duration, if not eternal, yet indefinite. The examples he has given in his glorious fictions, of heroism, honor, and truth; of large sympathies between man and man, of all that is good, great, and excellent, embodied in personages marked with so strong an individuality that we place them among our friends and favorites; his frank and generous men, his gentle and noble women, shall live through centuries to come, and only perish with our language."

The cool-blooded Bryant was here too impetuous; but this, at least, we can say in agreement: Cooper, with a hundred faults, possessed the surpassing merit due to a large literary creator in a field which he found and made his own.

of the

cusses

CHAPTER X.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

THERE are some writers-not many, in the literature of any land-whom it is a spontaLiterary neous pleasure to read. In their pages artists one is not troubled by notable unworthibeautiful. ness of theme, crudeness of plan, imperfection of development, irregularity of thought, infelicity of expression. All parts combine to give a high and true literary pleasure. The critic does not, to be sure, abdicate his function, or declare that the books of such writers are above praise. He prefers this to that, notes and disvarious characteristics of genius and product, and may even declare poem, tale, or large book a mistake or a failure. But the failure, in such a case, has to do with the grand design, not with its details; or perhaps the declaration of failure, means only that creator and critic hold radically different opinions on the subject in question. Of the substantial unity, completeness, natural beauty, and adequacy of the product, or perhaps of the author's whole genius, in its parts and in its entirety, there need arise no troublesome question. Thus, in considering the writings of Dante, one may prefer the "Divine Comedy," another the "New Life;" or, in reading the