rather than flattered. It needed
to be told the truth, however unwelcome; and in his eyes, that man was
no true patriot who was not willing to encounter unpopularity, if it
came in the line of duty. At the same time, while doing full justice to
the purity of his motives, we cannot shut our eyes to the defects (p. 163)
of his method. His abilities, his reputation, his acquaintance with
foreign lands, gave him inestimable advantages for influencing his
countrymen, and of educating them in matters where they stood sadly in
need of it. But the spirit in which he went to work deprived him of the
legitimate influence he should have exerted. Excitement, and passion,
and indignation led him often to say the wrong thing. More often they
caused him to say the right thing in the wrong way. Nor did he escape
the special temptation which speedily besets him who starts out to tell
his fellow-men unpleasant truths. Duty of this kind soon begins to have
a peculiar fascination of its own. The careful reader cannot fail to see
that in process of time the more disagreeable was the truth the more
delightful it became to Cooper to tell it. Most unreasonable it
certainly was to expect that constant fault-finding would be looked upon
as a proof of special attachment. The means, moreover, were not always
adapted to the end. Men may possibly be lectured to some extent into the
acquisition of the virtues, but they never can be bullied into the
graces.

Besides all this, in a great deal of Cooper's criticism there were
fundamental defects. He constantly confounded the unimportant and the
temporary with the important and the permanent. Many of his most violent
strictures are devoted to points of little consequence, and the feeling
expressed is out of all proportion to the significance of the matter
involved. Nothing, for instance, seemed to irritate him more than the
preference given by many of his countrymen to the scenery of America
over that of Europe. Especially was he indignant with the (p. 164)
"besotted stupidity" that could compare the bay of New York with that of
Naples. He returned to this topic in book after book. Yet of all the
harmless exhibitions of mistaken judgment, that which prefers the
scenery of one's own land is what a wise man would be least disposed to
find fault with; certainly what he would think least calculated to
inspire the wrath of a Juvenal. Cosmopolitanism is well enough in its
way. But that ability to se