tory which could be read by landsmen,
while seamen should feel its truth. The Pilot was the fruit of that
conversation. It is one of the most remarkable novels of the time, and
every where obtained instant and high applause.

_Lionel Lincoln_ followed. This was a second attempt to embody history
in an American work of fiction. It failed, and perhaps justly; yet it
contains one of the nicest delineations of character in Mr. Cooper's
works. I know of no instance in which the distinction between a maniac
and an idiot is so admirably drawn; the setting was bad, however, and
the picture was not examined.

In 1826 came _The Last of the Mohicans_. This book succeeded from the
first, and all over Christendom. It has strong parts and weak parts, but
it was purely original, and originality always occupies the ground. In
this respect it is like The Pilot.

After the publication of The Last of The Mohicans, Mr. Cooper went to
Europe, where his reputation was already well established as one of the
greatest writers of romantic fiction which our age, more prolific in men
of genius than any other, had produced. The first of his works after he
left his native country was _The Prairie_. Its success every where was
decided and immediate. By the French and English critics it has been
deemed the best of his stories of Indian life. It has one leading fault,
however, that of introducing any character superior to the family of the
squatter. Of this fault Mr. Cooper was himself aware before he finished
the work; but as he wrote and printed simultaneously, it was not easy to
correct it. In this book, notwithstanding, Natty Bumpo is quite up to
his mark, and is surpassed only in The Pathfinder. The reputation of The
Prairie, like that of The Pioneers, is in a large degree owing to the
opinions of the reviews; it is always a fault in a book that appeals to
human sympathies, that it fails with the multitude. In what relates to
taste, the multitude is of no great authority; but in all that is
connected with feeling, they are the highest; and for this simple
reason, that as man becomes sophisticated he deviates from nature, the
only true source of all our sympathies. Our feelings are doubtless
improved by refinement, and vice versa; but their roots are struck in
the human heart, and what fails to touch the heart, in these
particulars, fails, while that which does touch it, succeeds. The
perfection of this sort of writing is that which pleases equal