ments were accomplished by Cooper. The
first was the idealization of the white hunter whom he had described
in "The Pioneers." No one can read the two novels in succession without
seeing at once how much Leather-Stocking has gained in dignity. In
thought and feeling and habits he is essentially the same; but there
was given to his character a poetic elevation which raised it at once
to the front rank of the creations of the imagination, and will make
it imperishable with English literature. As he appears in "The Pioneers"
he is merely an old man who has made his home in the hills in advance
of the tide of settlement. He is the solitary hunter who views with
dislike clearings and improvements, who cannot breathe freely in streets,
who hates the sight of masses of men, who looks with especial loathing
upon the civilization whose first work is to fell the trees he has (p. 054)
learned to love, whose first exercise of power is to draw the network
of the law around the freedom and irresponsibility of forest life.
Though full of a simple and somewhat sententious morality, he is
querulous, irritable, ignorant. But in "The Last of the Mohicans,"
while the man continues the same, the aspect he presents is wholly
different. All that is weak in his character is in the background; all
that is best and strongest comes to the front. He is in the prime of
life. Ignorant he still remains of the ways of the world as found in
the settlements; but there is no trace of discontent or fretfulness.
He has full room for the exercise of his native virtues, and in the
character of the acute and daring scout he finds no superior. To him
forest and sky are an open book. Knowledge is conveyed to his ears in
every sound that breaks the stillness of the summer woods; and to his
eyes scarred rock and riven pine and the deserted nest of the eagle
have made the paths of the wilderness as plain as the broadest highway.
Nor are his moral qualities inferior to his purely professional. His
coolness never deserts him, his resources never fail him, and along
with the versatility that is never at a loss in the presence of the
unexpected is the resolution that never flinches at the approach of
the perilous.

This delineation has always met with unqualified praise. But the
idealization of the Indian character as seen in Chingachcook and Uncas
has been the subject of much controversy. This is not the place to
express an opinion upon the truth of the representatio