es that herald the march of civilization across
the continent. He sorrows at the ruin impending on all that is dearest to
his heart; but he awaits it in dignified submission. In fine contrast to
him stands the man who has likewise sought the solitude of the wilderness,
not because he loves the beauty and the majesty of primeval nature, but
because he hates the restraints that human society has thrown about the
indulgence of human passions. Criticism has rarely done justice to the
skill and power with which Cooper has drawn the squatter of the prairies,
who holds that land should be as free as air; who has traveled hundreds of
miles beyond the Mississippi to reach a place where title-deeds are not
registered and sheriffs make no levies; who neither fears God nor regards
man; to whom the rule of the rifle is the supremest law; and yet who, with
all his detestation of the safeguards which society has erected for its
security, has a moral code and a rough wild justice of his own.

"The Prairie" was followed by "The Red Rover," which came out on the 9th
of January, 1828. During the years that followed the publication (p. 074)
of "The Pilot," the reputation of that work had been steadily increasing.
Time had more than confirmed the first favorable impression. Not only
had any lingering prejudice against the sea-story as a story been
entirely swept away, but tales of this kind were beginning to be the
fashion. Imitators were springing up everywhere. It was natural, therefore,
for Cooper to turn his attention once more to a kind of fiction to the
composition of which he himself had originally opened the way. After
leaving the navy he had become one of the owners of a whaling vessel,
and in it had made one or two voyages to Newport. In the harbor of that
place he fixed the introduction of his new story of the sea. He had
taken up his residence during the summer of 1827 in the little hamlet of
St. Ouen on the Seine, not far from Paris. There, in the space of three
or four months, "The Red Rover" was written. From the date of its
appearance to the present time it has always been justly one of the most
popular of his productions, and perhaps, considered as a whole, stands
at the head of his sea-tales.

On the 6th of November, 1829, succeeded an Indian story of King Philip's
war, under the name of "The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish." The fanciful title
puzzled, and did not altogether please, the public. As a matter of fact
it was used onl