I

grotto-chamber, where by certain mechanical contrivances, to whose perfection I have given great care, the temperature and the composition of the supplied gases never vary. ask you, however little faith you may have in this experiment of mine, whatever scruples, religious or otherwise, may deter you, to see that he rests under precisely the same conditions fifty-three years longer. You will observe that entrance to the interior receptacle is impossible without deranging the apparatus. You will therefore not be tempted to pry too closely, and thus danger of accident is reduced to a minimum.

Knowing your fidelity, and the love you bear your old uncle, I do not for a moment doubt you. Yet neglect not the slightest detail of what I ask of you. Further directions you will find upon the inside

of the door which leads from my laboratory to the chamber beyond.

While you are young, Paolo, make such provision that in the event of your death, another's sincere mind and another's skilful hands shall fulfil my directions no less faithfully. But we are a long-lived race, we Rossis; I doubt not it will be your good-fortune to see the end of this. At times, I am sure the result must be success; at other times I am craven, and am tempted to confess all to Fra Bozenta, that he may

absolve me.

Yet, take this last not too seriously. I am unrepentant, at heart, Paolo, and were there any adequate payment for an instant's return of the passed spirit to life again, Satan might have my soul for all eternity, could I be with you at ten o'clock fifty-three years from to-night.

publication of

illustrated

THE editions of Cooper's Leather-Stocking Tales, simultaneously in London. and New York, affords an opportunity of saying something on the merits of a writer who, as a master of healthy and manly fiction, deserves to be better remembered than he seems to be at the present day, especially as the novel of romantic adventure has, for the time at least, regained its vogue. It is at present proposed to deal only with the five Indian tales, commonly known as the Leather-Stocking Series from the name of the wild hunter who is the hero of them all. In those, of which the scenes are placed among the lakes and forests inhabited down to the end of the last century almost exclusively by the Red Man, we have a set of original pictures with as marked an idiosyncrasy as the Highland stories of Sir Walter Scott. What Scott did in WAVERLEY, ROB Roy, and THE LEGEND OF MONTROSE for a race of men scarcely known to the English public of ninety years ago, this Fenimore Cooper did for the Delawares, Mohicans, and Iroquois, of whom only very vague ideas existed

on this side of the Atlantic, but who had no little in common with the Mac Ivors, the Macgregors, the Camerons, and the Children of the Mist. This is Cooper's title to fame. He saw the poetic and dramatic elements which lurked in the life of the Red Man, and only required drawing out by the hand of genius to form a valuable and unique addition to the national literature.

Fenimore Cooper, who was born in

1789 at Burlington in New Jersey, had been familiar in his boyhood with the remains of the Indian tribes who still maintained themselves in the Western forests of New York, retaining their ancient manners, customs, and character. Mohicans and Delawares came occasionally as far as his native village, and sometimes lingered for months in the neighbouring woods hunting such deer as still remained. In later life he was fond of referring to his own intercourse with them. While serving in in the American navy he had been ordered to Lake Ontario, which was reached by ascending the Mohawk and Oswego rivers to the port of Oswego on the lake. This was in 1808, when Cooper was a midshipman. At that time vast reaches of unbroken forest still lay on either side of the lake, in which bears, wolves, and panthers still prowled ; and the deer and the wood-grouse were so plentiful that the sparse population of the few villages which lay on his route were tired of eating them and longed for salt pork instead. The party remained for some time on Lake Ontario hunting, shooting, and fishing. Thus, long before he began to write, Cooper had gained considerable knowledge of the American primeval forest, and this at a period of life when such scenes leave deeper and more permanent impressions on the mind than in later years, when so many intervening cares and interests combine to blot them out.

Thus qualified for his task, Cooper began the Leather-Stocking Series, in his thirty-third year, with the story of THE PIONEERS published in 1822.

But this, although the first that was written, is the fourth in order of time if we look to the life of the hero. It finds the hunter an old man of seventy-six, if we are to trust his own account of his age given in THE PRAIRIE, of which the date is understood to be 1804, when he says that he is eighty-seven. From THE PIONEERS, the events of which are supposed to have occurred in 1793, our author takes a leap backwards of nearly forty years, introducing us again to his hero (then bearing the name of Hawkeye) in 1755, at the beginning of the Seven Years' War when Montcalm was in command of the French forces in Canada. This, the second tale of the series, is THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, and is followed by THE PATHFINDER, a story of the same war. Next comes THE PRAIRIE, when the author carries us forward again to the year of the hunter's death; and following this, and published in 1841, we have at last THE DEERSLAYER, which takes us back again more than sixty years, when that was the title borne by the young novice who was known to be a dead shot at game, but who had not yet drawn trigger on a human enemy. THE DEERSLAYER then, though the last in publication, is the first in order of events; and it is with this that we must begin if we would follow the career of LeatherStocking from youth to manhood, and from manhood to extreme old age.

Leather-Stocking is a white man by birth and a Christian, his real name being Nathaniel, or Natty, Bumpo. Before he became a forester he had served with the English army under a Major Effingham, of whom we shall hear more hereafter; but, at some period prior to 1740, he had quitted the service, taken to the woods, and been adopted by the tribe of Delawares. At the opening

of the story we are to suppose that he was about twenty-three, and had been leading this wild life for some four or five years. At the breaking out of the war of the Austrian Succession hostilities recommenced, if they could ever be said to have ceased, between the French and English in America, and Deerslayer, who had not yet abandoned all connection with the army, was employed by the English as a scout. The Delawares were a tribe friendly to this country, while the Mingoes, called indifferently Iroquois, Hurons, and Maquas, were in alliance with the French. Both sides alike offered rewards for the enemies' scalps; and one of Chatham's finest speeches was directed against this barbarous system, which was continued down to 1763.

At the opening of the story we find the Deerslayer on his way to meet a young Delaware chief, known as the Great Serpent, with whom he is to go upon his first war-path in the service of the English. The Serpent is the head of the ancient tribe of the Mohicans, now absorbed into the Delawares, but once powerful and renowned, and with what reverence the family were still regarded we shall see in the next act of the drama. While on the road Deerslayer falls in with a frontier man Harry March, commonly known as Hurry Harry, with whom he embarks on Lake Oswego (Glimmerglass), and is introduced to a curious character living upon the lake with his two daughters, Judith, a great beauty but one who has "tripped in her time," and Hetty, thoroughly pure and good but of slightly weak intellect. At one end of this lake is the spot where Deerslayer and the Indian are to meet. This has been chosen because the Serpent has a love-affair on hand as well, the Indian maiden, his betrothed, having been stolen by the

being

Iroquois who are supposed to be lying in ambush not very far from the lake. I will warn the reader at this point that the names given to the various Indian tribes are sometimes a little perplexing. The term Mingo seems to have been bestowed as a mark of contempt and hatred on more than one hostile tribe: "In these pages [writes the author in his introduction to THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS], Lenni-Lenape, Lenope, Delawares, Wapanachki, and Mohicans all mean tribes of the same stock. The Mengwe, the Maquas, the Mingoes, and the Iroquois, though not all strictly the same, are identified frequently by the speakers, being politically confederated and opposed to those just named," who constituted the Algonquin family. The Hurons, who seem to be a separate tribe, are also called Mingoes. How Floating Tom and his family, sometimes in a fortified building raised on piles in the open lake and called the Castle, sometimes in a floating scow called the Ark, are attacked by the hostile Indians, with the varying fortunes of the struggle which went on upon the lake and in the woods till the arrival of some English soldiers; how the Serpent recovered his bride; how old Tom and his daughter Hetty met their death; the rescue of the Deerslayer at the last moment when in the hands of his enemies and about to be put to the torture, the reader will discover for himself.

Three out of the other four tales are built on much the same lines. In THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS we have two young ladies, half-sisters, both young and handsome, setting out with a reinforcement sent from Fort Edward on the Hudson to Colonel Munro at Fort William Henry on the south of Lake George (Horican or Holy Lake). Taking a shorter cut than the troops, they are betrayed by their guide into No. 471.-VOL. LXXIX.

the hands of the Iroquois. They are rescued by Hawkeye and the Serpent, and concealed in some caves on an island in the river which Cooper had visited in his youth, and had then resolved to make the scene of a romance. After some sharp fighting the savages are for a time repulsed, but the besieged, on finding that their powder has been stolen, are eventually obliged to surrender. Hawkeye and the Serpent escape, and eventually rescue their fellowtravellers when on the point of being scalped. They then reach the fort in safety, where the father of the young ladies is in command; but the reinforcements not arriving, the French, commanded by Montcalm in person, compel him to capitulate. During the retreat the English are treacherously attacked and massacred by the Indians (a historical fact) and Alice and Cora again fall into the hand of the Hurons. After many adventures Alice is rescued, and in a final battle with the Hurons Cora is killed, together with the Serpent's young Uncas, who has just been recognised as their long lost chief by a tribe of Delawares.

son,

THE PATHFINDER, like THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, is divided into two parts. In the first Mabel Durham is travelling with her uncle Cap, an old sailor, and an Indian and his wife (Arrowhead and June) to meet her father Sergeant Dunham at one of the forts, just as Alice and Cora were. They are joined by Pathfinder, the Serpent, and Jasper, a young sailor. Arrowhead, their guide, betrays them as Renard had betrayed the others; but after a sharp skirmish with the Mingoes on the Oswego river, they reach the fort in safety. Then Dunham, with Mabel, Mabel, Cap, Jasper Western, the Pathfinder, and some soldiers set out

on a military expedition for an island on Lake Ontario, while the Serpent scouts along the shore. After being nearly shipwrecked they reach the island in safety, and find a blockhouse ready built in which they ensconce themselves. Most of the soldiers now leave the island on the duty assigned to them, which is to intercept the enemy's supplies, leaving a corporal with a few men behind under the command of an officer, who has treacherously advised the Mingoes of the soldiers' departure. The savages attack. Mabel, warned by June, takes refuge in the blockhouse; the corporal and several soldiers are killed; but Pathfinder and the Serpent, of course, turn up in the nick of time, and all goes well in the end, except that Dunham is killed. Mabel marries Jasper, and the departure and farewell of Pathfinder are among the most touching scenes which Cooper has ever written.

We do not meet with him again, as already intimated, till he is quite an old man. But THE PIONEERS is so different from the rest of the series that it will be best to go on to THE PRAIRIE before referring to it more particularly. In THE PRAIRIE, then, we find Natty Bumpo a simple trapper, being too old for hunting, though he still uses his rifle occasionally. The plot is laid substantially on the same lines as those of the preceding three. There are two girls travelling across the forest with a settler's waggon, one, Inez, the kidnapped bride of an American officer who lost her on the day of their wedding. They fall into all kinds of perilous situations, and are captured by Mahtoree, chief of the Sioux. The trapper and a bee-hunter, Paul Hover, in love with the other girl, Ellen Wade, help Middleton, her husband, to rescue Inez. A noble young Pawnee chief opportunely comes in to fill the place

of the Serpent, and makes himself generally useful on various critical occasions. He too is rescued by a party of his own tribe just as the torture is beginning.

IN THE PIONEERS Natty Bumpo has acquired the title of LeatherStocking which gives its name to the series. He lives now on the confines of civilisation in a hut near a thriving settlement, his companion being a young man of whom nobody seems to know much. But there is also concealed in the cave a very old man, the Major Effingham with whom Bumpo had once served, and this young man was his grandson. Before the Revolutionary War the family had owned large tracts of land in the vicinity, but were now reduced to poverty, and at the time the tale opens the old man was being supported in secret by his grandson and his old servant Leather-Stocking. When at length he is discovered, Judge Temple, an old friend in former days, restores half the property to young Effingham, who naturally marries his daughter. Natty Bumpo shoulders his rifle and takes himself off to an Indian tribe; and two years afterwards, as we learn from THE PRAIRIE, when Middleton resolves to ride across the country to enquire after him, he arrives just in time to witness his death. He is sitting on a bench, his rifle rifle (Killdeer) propped up beside him, and his old hound Hector, who had but recently died, so well stuffed as to look like life, reposing at his feet. In this position he expires. How he himself heard the last words of his old comrade the Serpent, is described in THE PIONEERS. Having kept company with them both through four volumes, and with Leather-stocking through five, one almost seems to feel a real heart-ache at parting from them, as if they had been actual friends.

These short epitomes of the tales