Hottinguers never dream of, which finds no difficulty of investment even without the facility of a national debt, and which is daily working results to which even the Sankay canal and Chatmoss embankment afford no formidable rivalry.

But we have no mind just now to tickle the national egotism in the matter of accumulation of property. The increase of wealth with us is, after all, not so very extraordinary. When we extricated ourselves from the go-cart of colonial government, there were many kind souls, skilled no doubt in the rearing of infant nations, who thought we should toddle helplessly for a few years, until some able-bodied nurse might extend her arms for us to drop into. But there were even then better seers of the future of America. Mr. Burke, who perceived more clearly afar off than immediately before him, and whose vision across the Atlantic was unobscured by the bloody mists which dimmed his view of the nearer republic, commemorated at an early period "the victorious industry of a people as yet in the gristle;" he well foresaw what that people might effect, when they should be "hardened into the bone of manhood." A due consideration of the character of the colonies, of the stock from which they sprung, of the stimulating character of the new government, and of the vast capabilities of the country, leaves not much reason to any Dominie Sampson of the young world to cry out "Prodigious!" at the rapid settlement of the States, and their correspondent increase of wealth. There is far more cause of wonder and pride in the advance of mental culture and civilization in the United States than in our mere material progress; and however little favour the remark may find in the eyes of the engineer_corps, we hold the former far more worthy of a special pæan. But there is, it seems, some difference of opinion as to the meaning of this term, civilization. M. Cousin says in one of his Reports, "that though England be covered with the mantle of a material civilization, France and Prussia have an indisputable right to be considered the two most civilized countries of Europe."* We may differ as to the test. With M. Cousin, the generous system of public instruction in the one country, and the freedom of the public institutions; the glories of the metropolis, and copious literature of the other-settle the question in their favour. But they of British blood will try the matter after a different mode. They think that good government is one of the surest tests of civilization-that the habeas corpus is one sign-the freedom of the press another-a liberal elective

"Je regarde la France & la Prusse comme les deux pays les plus éclairés de l'Europe, les plus avancés dans les lettres & les sciences, les plus vraiment civilisées sans excepter L'Angleterre toute herissée de préjugés, d'institutions gothiques, de coutumes à demi barbares, sur lesquels est mal étendu le manteau d'une civilisation toute matérielle." Rapport sur l'état de l'instruction publique, &c. 1re Partie, p. 109. Imprimérie Royale. Paris: 1832.

franchise another. It may be very well for the representative of a nation that cannot make a chimney to draw, nor a stage coach that will travel over five miles an hour; that turns its furrows with a wooden mould-board, and chops down his trees with a hatchet to turn up his nose at the "civilisation materielle” of other people; but on this side of the water we may be allowed to hold that the economy, expedition, and comfort of every day life, enter to a considerable extent among the elements of civili

zation.

The material civilization of the United States, imperfect as it is, is confined almost exclusively to a narrow strip along the Atlantic, and the squeamish travellers who come out of the magnificent hostelries of New Bond street think little enough of it. But the extraordinary part of the matter is, that we have any thing beyond this, and that the inhabitants of so wild and uncultivated a country should have had the sense to appreciate the importance of the polite arts, and with so many calls for expenditures apparently more immediately and practically useful, the munificence to cultivate them. How comes it, that within fifty years we have made such intellectual advances? Why, in the nature of things, should we be ahead of that meagre and spiritless iron age of the colonies, from which the zeal and patriotism of our antiquaries can scarcely extract a paragraph that might not "flutter in Soho?" Any other people, in this our present stage of existence, might perhaps have an Ennius-they might possibly produce a Pierce Plowman: they certainly could not think to possess any literature that might hope for either a general or permanent reputation.

Property has every where been the basis and forerunner of civilization. Before poetry, or sculpture, or music have made advances, there has been a great accumulation of wealth to support these unproductive consumers. The troubadours were the hangers on of the castled barons-the early painters, the dependents of the opulent priests. England and France had an exclusive and wealthy class, a court and nobles, before Shakspeare and Montaigne, or Chaucer and Rabelais. We are the only poor people that have from the beginning appropriated a portion of its savings to cultivate and patronize, which means to pay for literature. What are the wonders of a steam-boat, a rail-road, or a canal? they are the natural productions of the country-but according to the experience of other nations, we ought to have waited more than one century before we could have hoped to add dignity to the western world, by producing a Cooper, an Irving, or a Bryant.

We assert no doubtful proposition when we say, that compared with the United States, there never was a country so wild in its external features, in which nature had been so little subdued, that had made any proportionate progress in the arts which humanize, refine, and embellish-no country, we mean, where the matter has

been left to itself, and where the universal energies of the mass have done that which the patronage of the privileged classes has elsewhere effected. More than this, if the fact could be ascertained, we apprehend it would appear that there is no country at this moment on the face of the globe, where, including common schools, academies, and colleges, the countless republications of foreign works, and the constantly augmenting number of native productions, so large a proportion of the national income is devoted to the advance of civilization, in the highest and noblest sense that even M. Cousin can attach to the word. From its childhood, the young Briareus with half his hundred arms embraced the spirit of industry, and with the other aided and upheld the genius of refinement.

But those who first among us gave themselves to the pursuit of literature, entertained no very " august ambition." Imitation is the natural tendency of the very young-students themselves, but neither accurate nor profound, they paid a ready and willing homage to the great labours and prodigious results of their elder brethren of the ripe old world. While they should have looked to the day-star of the West, they kept their venerating gaze fixed upon the East-they had no imagination of the expanse, trackless as their own woods and mightily marked as the bold features of their own land, which lay open, inviting wanderers, and wide enough for myriads. It was reserved for one of a sailor's education, matriculated and graduated upon the ocean, to point out to them their true path, and at once to take the lead in it-to gain the title and acquire the reputation of the American Novelist.

In taking as the text of our article Mr. Cooper's works, it will readily be conceived that we do not intend to go into an elaborate analysis of some thirty volumes. We have not to do with a writer of yesterday, unknown to the public, whose standing might yet be within the power of a reviewer-but with a reputation that has made for itself a horizon far beyond our scope, which no longer requires praise, and which may defy minute and petty criticism. The works of Mr. Cooper naturally divide themselves into three classes-his American novels, portraying the peculiar features of this country, including the SPY, PIONEERS, MOHICANS, PRAIRIE, LIONEL LINCOLN, and WEPT OF THE WISH-TON-WISH; his sea novels, in which the interest is made to turn upon the varieties of ocean life, the PILOT, RED Rover, WATER WITCH; and his political novels, or those having a distinct republican moral, the BRAVO, HEIDENMAUER, and HEADSMAN. These different species of the genus Romance all owe their origin to Mr. Cooper; and a few brief and disjunct remarks upon the most prominent features and peculiar merits of each class, will constitute the whole of our present task. We but record the verdict of the whole literary world, in placing Mr. Cooper at the head of American writers of fiction, not more

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in point of time than of degree. What is there in the dark pictures of Brown that might not, with but trifling modifications, be shaped to suit another age and another country? Mr. Irving, the only serious rival of Mr. Cooper, as to date, is not of the sturdy distinctive American school. His delicate humour, which Goldsmith might have envied, formed food for itself in the annals of the Manhattanese,” and in the traditions of the dells of the Kaaterskill; but the peculiar characteristics of his country, the poetry and eloquence of its people and institutions, have not often found an organ in him. Mr. Cooper has never lost sight of this leading idea. Whether on the banks of the Otsego, in the shadow of the Coliseum, or among the canals of Venice, his mind has always retained its original bias-the sharp edges of his character have not been worn off to the smooth and ordinary uniformity that the fiction of the world generally produces.

With an ardent affection for his country, based upon a most accurate sense of its peculiar excellencies; with an intense love of freedom, and with an eloquence and power that it is no panegyric to call of the first order, he has first ennobled American fiction, by making it the vehicle of those leading American ideas which are the chief boast of the republic. He has lost no opportunity of enforcing the multitudinous truths, all springing from the one fundamental idea of self-government; nor ever failed to claim for his country its rightful share in that revolution which the earth is undergoing, as surely as it is performing its daily and nightly gyrations.

It is more than fifteen years since Mr. Cooper gave to the world his PRECAUTION.* It is said that when he took up his pen, he was uncertain whether he should write a homily or a romance. It is very clear that he had no knowledge of his own power. The scene was laid in England, and the work could claim no other place than among the copies of the thousand and one spiritless romances which the English press had just about that time ceased to put forth. In his preface to the PIONEERS he has himself commemorated its fate. "The first book was written because I was told that I could not write a grave tale; so to prove that the world did not know me, I wrote one that was so grave nobody would read it, wherein I think that I had much the best of the argument."

But he was not slow to perceive his error: "Ashamed to have fallen into the track of imitation, he endeavoured to repair the wrong done to his own views, by producing a work that should be

*He had previously taken a considerable share in the politics of his county, (Westchester,) and had exercised his hand in various newspaper essays and pasquinades. Perhaps some of that district may yet remember the squib, one verse of which began

"Sheriff J- -m, sheriff J- -m,

You're tall and you're slim, &c. &c."

purely American, and of which love of country should be the theme." (Letter, p. 98.) The Spy was published in 1822. The thrilling incidents of our revolutionary struggle, and the romantic episodes of a border warfare, furnished him his subject, and he laid the foundation of his reputation broad and deep in the rugged rocks of his own Westchester. The black Cæsar; the quiet, energetic, and peculiarly American, Harvey Birch; the noisy Virginia captain and Betty Flanagan; all proved that there was a "chiel amang us takin notes," quick to perceive and most successful in delineating individual character: while the execution of the cow-boy, the escape of young Wharton, and the death of poor Lawton, showed him an equal master of the moving or the startling incident and the hair breadth 'scape. The Spy was published at a time "when the habit of looking to others most disqualified the public to receive a native author with favour," (Letter, p. 98,) but its success was not a moment doubtful. Whatever may be the case with the critics, the reading and thinking mass in America are not the slaves of foreign opinion, and no certificate from the Edinburgh or Quarterly was required to bring the Spy into vogue. Multitudes did at once seriously incline to the perusal of this book, and enrolled themselves among the patrons of the new school.

Confining ourselves to that class of Mr. Cooper's productions which we have placed first, comprising those which are peculiarly distinguished by their representations of American character and manners, the LAST OF THE MOHICANS, the PIONEERS, and the PRAIRIE, offer themselves to us, although published in a different order and at considerable intervals of time,* as his most prominent works, or rather as parts of one harmonious whole, linked together by the character which, under the different names of the Scout, Leather Stocking, and the Trapper, furnishes the real hero of the three.

Nathaniel Bumppo is, with the single exception perhaps of Tom Coffin, the most original and best sustained of Mr. Cooper's creations; and had he done nothing else, this would for ever entitle him to a high place among the poets of the western hemisphere, in the original signification of the term. There is indeed something exceedingly instructive and touching "in the life of a veteran of the forest, who, having commenced his career near the Atlantic, is driven by the unceasing and unparalleled advance of population, to seek a final refuge against society in the broad and tenantless plains of the west."-Pref. to the Prairie.

We are first introduced to Hawkeye, or the Longue Carabine of the Mohicans-a scout employed occasionally in the service of the English army, but whose tastes and friendships have driven him entirely to a forest life, and a strict association with one of

*The Pioneers in 1823, the Mohicans in 1826, and the Prairie in 1827.