ersons of humble social position. He wields his brush
with a vigorous hand, but the brush itself has not a fine point. Of all
the children of his brain, Natty Bumppo is the most universal
favorite,--and herein the popular judgment is assuredly right. He is an
original conception,--and not more happily conceived than skilfully
executed. It was a hazardous undertaking to present the character
backwards, and let us see the closing scenes of his life first,--like a
Hebrew Bible, of which the beginning is at the end; but the author's
genius has triumphed over the perils of the task, and given us a
delineation as consistent and symmetrical as it is striking and vigorous.
Ignorant of books, simple, and credulous, guileless himself, and
suspecting no evil in others, with moderate intellectual powers, he
commands our admiration and respect by his courage, his love of Nature,
his skill in woodland lore, his unerring moral sense, his strong
affections, and the veins of poetry that run through his rugged nature
like seams of gold in quartz. Long Tom Coffin may be described as
Leatherstocking suffered a sea-change,--with a harpoon instead of a rifle,
and a pea-jacket instead of a hunting-shirt. In both the same primitive
elements may be discerned: the same limited intellectual range combined
with professional or technical skill; the same generous affections and
unerring moral instincts; the same religious feeling, taking the form at
times of fatalism or superstition. Long Tom's love of the sea is like
Leatherstocking's love of the woods; the former's dislike of the land is
like the latter's dislike of the clearings. Cooper himself, as we are told
by his daughter, was less satisfied, in his last years, with Long Tom
Coffin than most of his readers,--and, of the two characters, considered
that of Boltrope the better piece of workmanship. We cannot assent to this
comparative estimate; but we admit that Boltrope has not had full justice
done to him in popular judgment. It is but a slight sketch, but it is
extremely well done. His death is a bit of manly and genuine pathos; and
in his conversations with the chaplain there is here and there a touch of
true humor, which we value the more because humor was certainly not one of
the author's best gifts.

Antonio, the old fisherman, in "The Bravo," is another very well drawn
character, in which we can trace something of a family likeness to the
hunter and sailor above mentioned. The scene in wh