his later years, if
the flame of his patriotism seemed at times to die away, any little
circumstance was sure to revive it at once. No proclaimer of "manifest
destiny" ever had more faith than he in the imperial greatness and
grandeur to which the republic was to attain. All that in vulgar minds
took the shape of braggart boasting, was in his idealized and glorified
by his lofty conception of the majestic part which his country was to
play in deciding the destinies of mankind. In spite of short-comings he
deplored, of perils that he feared, firm in his heart was the conviction
that here was to be the home of the great new race that was to rule the
world. Other lands might look to the future with hope or doubt; his own
was as sure of it as if it lay already in its grasp. This was a
confidence that survived all changes, and despised all forebodings. The
question of slavery certainly disturbed him, but it did not shake (p. 086)
his trust. The prophecies of the dissolution of the Union, current
in Europe, he laughed to scorn. Even in the days of nullification his
faith never wavered one jot. To no one, more justly than to him, could
perpetual thanks have been voted, because he never despaired of the
republic.

Cooper's lofty views of his country he soon found were essentially
different from those entertained abroad. The knowledge of America even
now possessed in Europe is not burdensomely great. But in 1830 its
ignorance was prodigious; and the nearest approach to interest was
usually the result of something of that same vague fear which haunted
the citizens of the Roman Empire at the possible perils to civilization
that might lie hid in the boundless depths of the German forests. On the
Continent the ignorance was greater than it was in England, and Cooper
had plenty of opportunities of witnessing the exhibition of it. In the
case of the common people he was amused by it. That the whites who had
emigrated to America had not yet become entirely black; that it was
reasonable to expect that time, while it could not restore their original
hue to these deteriorated Europeans tanned to ebony, might in the
revolution of the suns elevate them to a fair degree of civilization;
these, and similar sage opinions, did not disturb him when uttered by the
philosophers of the lower classes. Yet their ignorance, great as it was,
he found not to surpass materially that of men who ought to have known
better, so long as they pretended to kno