sion of all his faculties and all his happiness, only in ploughing with free keel, the vast floods of ocean. For this man there is no victory but that over the billows; no heroism save in the strife with them, no happiness but in this warfare. Coarse, barbarous, vulgar, he is yet great, for he represents the energy of humanity fighting with the energy of nature.

cate.

Cooper has his defects which we have not forgotten to indiBefore him the world had never seen a novelist who was manufacturer, industriel, artisan. He materializes the interest of his best pages. If he launches a vessel, you will read a treatise on ship-building. If a rope break, you will learn how ropes are made, and by what mechanical means the accident might have been prevented. He says all, which is too much. He will not leave one detail unexplained, not a hatchway unanalyzed, nor a corner of the vessel without mentioning the wood of which she is built. Enemy of the ideal, he is like a chemist or mechanician-who must render a full account. He observes even men in this way, submitting them to a laborious and inexorable examination.

The history of his life is short. His family, originally from Buckinghamshire, England, moved to America about 1679. He was born at Burlington, on the Delaware, in 1789, and his education was commenced at Yale College, New Haven. At the age of thirteen, he entered the navy. This apprenticeship formed his spirit; here he collected the elements of those pictures so much admired. He married the daughter of Pierre de Lancy, quitted the service, and since that time has given himself up to the composition of his books. Every year came a new one. Translated into German, French, Italian, they produced a vivid sensation in Europe.

He passed a good deal of his life in Europe, especially at Paris. In England, his frankness, austerity and clearly-expressed republicanism and his national pride displeased.

In America, the same puritan sincerity, his reprobation of democratic vices, in a word, his plain-speaking, of which he was proud, and which he pushed to excess; did not help to conciliate the love of his compatriots.

Inferior in art and style to the great European romancers, there is yet a vivid historical interest attached to his works, which philosophy will never read without curiosity. There, the pure Saxon race struggles with the savages, the solitude, the desert, hunger and nature. It is the same blood, cool and persevering valor, love of gain, industry, audacity, enterprize, which marked the old Norman conquests; it is the same force without vivacity; the same sagacity without frivolity, the same ferocity towards a fighting enemy, the same pardon for the conquered, and the same faith in human power.

This indestructible permanence of races, of their soul and genius, is a magnificent spectacle for the philosopher. The Gaul of the days of Brennus, the French Canadian or the Marquis under Louis XIV., are recognizable by indelible marks the indomitable Caradoc, Hastings in India, and Cromwell's Puritan unite in the Last of the Saxons-the American Trapper!

SECTION IX.

PAULDING-THE BROTHER JONATHAN-DOCTOR CHANNING.

To those whose claims we have just examined, we might add Joel Barlow, author of the Columbiad, a poem which has both eloquence and vigor; and Paulding, whose Dutchman's Fireside, a pleasant elegy, is a soft and enfeebled imitation of the Vicar of Wakefield; and the biographer of Brother Jonathan, a cleverly puerile writer, for whom a

mole-hill is a mountain, and a drop of milk, the ocean.

The vigor of creation; the energy of original intelligence, are not to be found in any of these authors, in a sufficient measure to class them among men of genius, Cooper excepted. Doctor Channing, the most eloquent sacred writer of America, has a claim to our attention-the peculiar characteristics of his race and country are to be found in his works.

I doubt whether there be a quite impartial eloquence; yet, Dr. Channing tries to establish impartiality, equity, and balance of opinions. This is just and reasonable, but that may be equally so; these opinions may be sustained, yet the opposing ones have their probable and plausible side. Dr. Channing collects the most contradictory axioms which he strives to unite into a republic; to this barren labor, he applies an unequalled tact and diplomacy; he condemns, absolves, criticises, and praises; he is not only eclectic, but hospitable to every theory. Ancient prejudice has it merit, paradox its advantage. You may defend the one without warring against the other; can win approbation from all sides, and manage to win glory without belonging to any particular flag.

This cowardice of thought, this feeble terror of opinion, will disappear as more advanced civilization comes to the United States. The actual fashion of American institutions; the natural and necessary action of a people who use all their efforts for the material conquest of Nature and the creation of industry, causes all men to march in battalion and towards the same point. There is no more free opinion, no more hardiness of intellect. An inexorable ostracism, banishes all that passes a certain limit. Anathema on that thought which

leaves the common hive!

Hence we have an universal complaisance, simple and easy, in received ideas. Now if everybody is to be like everybody

else, common ideas will have the precedence, for they are the most general, and whosoever will dare attack them, will outrage the whole community and insult each of its members— then he will be treated like a general enemy. One does not like to commit lèse-vulgaire; one thinks like all the rest of the world; chokes one's fantasies, marches in the ranks and keeps step, and does not wish to become the black sheep of the flock. Political liberty ends by enslaving thought.

This can only be a temporary position. So soon as the material interests are satisfied, an opposition to the weight of opinion will soon be formed. Independence will be born; the free essays of intelligence will not be crimes, the popular inquisition will vanish and each frater-familias will cease to be what Cooper calls "a Familiar of the republican Holy Office."

This democratic sin, this wish to tickle the mob and to please everybody, is too easily recognized in the works of Dr. Channing. The tomb of Mahomet, suspended between heaven and earth does not vascillate in a more perilous position. The doctor loves liberty, but he does not deny that despotism has its advantages. He wants Europe to applaud him, but he must have also the praises of America. Looking at the same moment at the two worlds, trembling lest he lose popularity in either; bowing to all parties, flinging a bit of flattery to every sect, reserving a means of retreat and an asylum in all possible opinions; unitarian without exaggeration, he excuses the errors of the Catholic Church, at the moment that he confesses the merit and eloquence of the French philosophers accused of atheism; he loves the republic and defends. the Bourbons; will not repulse the Jesuits but acknowledges. their errors; insults Bonaparte without questioning his genius; is hostile neither to imagination nor cleverness, provided that they be moderate and serious; he is very fond of philosophi

cal criticism but united to religion, and is devoted to the interests of the Faith, so long as it is tolerant. In a word, he has so much reserve in his predilections, so many modifica tions in his opinions, so many withdrawals, shades, conditions, amendments and amendments to amendments, that it is very difficult to find out what this republican soul is or desires. If he judge Milton or Bonaparte, he lacks the courage. Before such giants his pencil trembles; he understands only common ambitions. When, for instance, the doctor thunders against conquerors, and upholds the literary profession, it is like a pedagogue vaunting his grammar, elevating his own profession above all others, and considering himself as the equal of heroes. "I have known," says Fielding, "an excellent man, with but one absurdity. It was to consider a schoolmaster as the greatest man on earth, and himself as the greatest of schoolmasters. These two ideas could not have been driven out of his head, though Alexander himself, at the head of his armies, should have attempted it."

There are strong and beautiful pages in the works of Channing; though that eloquence sustained, elaborated and got up for effect recalls too much the declamations of Seneca the Rhetorician, or of Thomas the Academician. And thus, in spite of real talent and powerful solemnity, Channing takes no marked place among original writers.

Nations, like men, do not discover their proper originality until after long trials. Under the Puritans the literature of the United States is only a servile reproduction of the cross sermons of the Covenanters. With Franklin, and the American Cultivator, the American soul finds voice and accent, agreeable and graceful, but indistinct. Thus, in Irving, some pictures of American nature, or of Dutch households are gracefully and vigorously prominent. Fennimore Cooper fol