ich was constantly becoming
more pronounced. The Puritanic narrowness of the very deep and genuine
religious element in his nature was steadily increasing as time went on.
In "Precaution" it has been already observed that the doctrine had been
laid down by one of the characters that there should be no marriage
between Christians and non-Christians. In "Wing-and-Wing" this doctrine
was fully carried out. The heroine is a devout Roman Catholic. She loves
devotedly the hero, the captain of the French privateer. She (p. 244)
trusts in his honor; she admires his abilities and character; she is
profoundly affected by the fervor of the affection he bears to herself.
But he is an infidel. He is too honest and honorable to pretend to
believe and think differently from what he really believes and thinks.
As she cannot convert him, she will not marry him: and in the end
succeeds indirectly, by her refusal, in bringing about his death. It
never seemed to occur to Cooper that the course of conduct he was
holding up as praiseworthy, in his novels, could have little other
effect in real life than to encourage hypocrisy where it did not produce
misery. The man who, for the sake of gaining a great prize, changes his
religious views is sure to have his sincerity distrusted by others. That
can be borne. But he is equally certain to feel distrust of himself. He
cannot have that perfect confidence in his own convictions, or even in
his own character, that would be the case had no considerations of
personal advantage influenced him in the slightest in the decision he
had made, or the conclusions to which he had come. Even he who believes
in this course of action as something to be quietly adopted might wisely
refuse to proclaim it loudly as a rule for the conduct of life.

The next important work that followed was "Wyandotte; or the Hutted
Knoll." It was published on the 5th of September, 1843. The story, as a
whole, was a tragic one. In spite of the fact that the events occur in
the place and time where some of the author's greatest successes had
been achieved, this novel is inferior to all his others that deal with
the same scenes. Certain manifestations of his feelings and certain
traits of character indicated, rather than expressed, in the tales
immediately preceding, were in this one distinctly revealed. His (p. 245)
dislike of the newspapers and the critics has been so often referred
to that it needs hardly to be said that in al