tisfactory. We are so constantly told of his calmness
and abstraction, of his sudden starts and bursts of feeling, of his low
voice, of his fits of musing, that the aggregate impression is that of
affectation and self-consciousness, rather than of a simple, passionate,
and heroic nature. Mr. Gray does not seem to us at all like the rash,
fiery, and dare-devil Scotchman of history. His conduct and conversation,
as recounted in the fifth chapter of the novel, are unnatural and
improbable; and we cannot wonder that the first lieutenant did not know
what to make of so melodramatic and sententious a gentleman, in the guise
of a pilot.

Cooper, as we need hardly say, has drawn copiously upon Indian life and
character for the materials of his novels; and among foreign nations much
of his reputation is due to this fact. Civilized men and women always take
pleasure in reading about the manners and habits of savage life; and those
in whom the shows of things are submitted to the desires of the mind
delight to invest them with those ideal qualities which they do not find,
or think they do not, in the artificial society around them. Cooper had
enjoyed no peculiar opportunities of studying by personal observation the
characteristics of the Indian race, but he had undoubtedly read everything
he could get hold of in illustration of the subject. No one can question
the vividness and animation of his sketches, or their brilliant tone of
color. He paints with a pencil dipped in the glow of our sunset skies and
the crimson of our autumn maples. Whenever he brings Indians upon the
stage, we may be sure that scenes of thrilling interest are before us:
that rifles are to crack, tomahawks to gleam, and arrows to dart like
sunbeams through the air; that a net of peril is to be drawn around his
hero or heroine, from the meshes of which he or she is to be extricated by
some unexpected combination of fortunate circumstances. We expect a
succession of startling incidents, and a rapid course of narrative without
pauses or languid intervals. We do not object to his idealizing his
Indians: this is the privilege of the novelist, time out of mind. He may
make them swift of foot, graceful in movement, and give them a form like
the Apollo's; he may put as much expression as he pleases into their black
eyes; he may tessellate their speech as freely as he will with poetical
and figurative expressions, drawn from the aspects of the external world:
for all th