; every great city has its Becky Sharpe
and Major Pendennis. One has only to listen to a group of Irish laborers
in their unrestrained talk to find that the delicious _non sequitur_,
which is the charm of the grave-diggers' conversation in "Hamlet," is by
no means obsolete. But who can write such a colloquy? It would be
easier, we fancy, for a clever man to give a sketch of Lord Bacon, with
all his rapid and profound generalization, than to follow the slow and
tortuous mental processes of a clodhopper.

To secure the attention of his readers, the novelist must construct a
plot and create the characters whose movements shall produce the
designed catastrophe, and, by the incidents and dialogue, exhibit the
passions, the virtues, the aspirations, the weaknesses, and the villany
of human nature. It is needless to say that most characters in fiction
are as shadowy as Ossian's ghosts; the proof is, that, when the
incidents of the story have passed out of memory, the persons are
likewise forgotten. Of all the popular novelists, not more than half a
dozen have ever created characters that survive,--characters that are
felt to be "representative men." After Shakspeare and Scott, Dickens
comes first, unquestionably; although, in analysis, philosophy, force,
and purity of style, he is far inferior to Thackeray. Parson Adams will
not be forgotten, nor that gentle monogamist, the good Vicar of
Wakefield. But as for Bulwer, notwithstanding his wonderful art in
construction and the brilliancy of his style, who remembers a character
out of his novels, unless it be Doctor Riccabocca?

After this rather long preamble, let us hasten to say, that Cooper, in
spite of many and the most obvious faults, has succeeded in portraying a
few characters which stand out in bold relief,--and that his works,
after years of criticism and competition, still hold their place, on
both continents, among the most delightful novels in the language. Other
writers have appeared, with more culture, with more imagination, with
more spiritual insight, with more attractiveness of style; but
Leatherstocking, in the virgin forest, with the crafty, painted savage
retreating before him, and the far-distant hum of civilization following
his trail, is a creation which no reader ever can or would forget,--a
creation for which the merely accomplished writer would gladly exchange
all the fine sentences and word-pictures that he had ever put on paper.
It is also due to Coop