t we have above stated is not the only explanation of this. He was the
first writer who made foreign nations acquainted with the characters and
incidents of American frontier and woodland life; and his delineations of
Indian manners and traits were greatly superior in freshness and power, if
not in truth, to any which had preceded them. His novels opened a new and
unwrought vein of interest, and were a revelation of humanity under
aspects and influences hitherto unobserved by the ripe civilization of
Europe. The taste which had become cloyed with endless imitations of the
feudal and mediaeval pictures of Scott turned with fresh delight to such
original figures--so full of sylvan power and wildwood grace--as Natty
Bumppo and Uncas. European readers, too, received these sketches with an
unqualified, because an ignorant admiration. We, who had better knowledge,
were more critical, and could see that the drawing was sometimes faulty,
and the colors more brilliant than those of life.

The acute observer can detect a parallel between the relation of Cooper to
America and that of Scott to Scotland. Scott was as hearty a Scotchman as
Cooper an American: but Scott was a Tory in politics and an Episcopalian
in religion; and the majority of Scotchmen are Whigs in politics and
Presbyterians in religion. In Scott, as in Cooper, the elements of passion
and sympathy were so strong that he could not be neutral or silent on the
great questions of his time and place. Thus, while the Scotch are proud of
Scott, as they well may be,--while he has among his own people most
intense and enthusiastic admirers,--the proportion of those who yield to
his genius a cold and reluctant homage is probably greater in Scotland
than in any other country in Christendom. "The rest of mankind recognize
the essential truth of his delineations, and his loyalty to all the primal
instincts and sympathies of humanity"; but the Scotch cannot forget that
he opposed the Reform Bill, painted the Covenanters with an Episcopalian
pencil, and made a graceful and heroic image of the detested Claverhouse.

The novels of Cooper, in the dates of their publication, cover a period of
thirty years: beginning with "Precaution," in 1820, and ending with "The
Ways of the Hour," in 1850. The production of thirty-two volumes in thirty
years is honorable to his creative energy, as well as to the systematic
industry of his habits. But even these do not constitute the whole of his
lite