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near us.

we whispered to a grand-daughter of the General's who stood "Mr. Cooper: do you not know Mr. Cooper ?-let me introduce you to him." "Cooper," said we to ourself, "can it be that we are within five paces of Cooper, and that there, too, are the feeble representatives of the race around which his genius has shed a halo like that of Homer's own heroes!" We were fresh from the "Mohicans," and our hand trembled as it met the cordial grasp of the man to whom we owed so many pleasing hours. We asked him about the Indians. "They are poor specimens," said he, "fourth-rate at the best in their own woods, and ten times the worse for the lives they have been leading here." We would gladly have prolonged the conversation, but the guests were beginning to move, and we were both borne onward by the throng.

A day or two afterwards we met him in the General's bedroom, and we mention it here, as it afforded us an opportunity of witnessing his first interview with Béranger, and seeing how warmly the great poet welcomed him. And next we met him at Florence, in his beautiful little villa, just a stone's throw from the walls. Two years had passed away, and he had been working all the while in the rich mine which his own hands had opened. His face showed it, and his manner showed it. They were the face and manner of a man whose mind is ever busy with something that he loves, who comes to his task cheerfully, and still feels bright and cheerful when he lays it aside, because he knows that there are new pleasures in store for him, when he returns to it again.

We have often heard Cooper speak of poetry, and hardly ever without bringing in something about Shakspeare. He was the most enthusiastic admirer of "Nature's darling" that we ever met. "Shakspeare," he said to us one day "is my traveling library. When I have got him with me, I never feel the want of any other book. Whatever humor I am in, he is sure to have something just suited to it. Grave or gay, practical or dreamy, lounging or wide awake, it is all one, for he has scenes and characters to fit them all. To a novel writer, above all, he is an invaluable friend. Publishers will have mottoes for every chapter; and how I should get along with

out Shakspeare I cannot conceive. I like to take them from my cotemporaries whenever I can, and particularly from our own poets. It is a kind of compliment which they have a right to, and I am always glad when I can pay it. Sometimes, however, it is no easy thing. Many a page have I turned over and over without being able to find anything to my purpose; but I never yet turned over three in Shakspeare without hitting upon just what I wanted."

We have always regretted that we did not make a memorandum of our last conversation with Cooper. It was at Putnam's that we met him-just after the appearance of the first volume of the new edition of his works; an edition which, with that of Mr. Irving's, would, to all who know the history of them, have been sufficient to associate the publisher's name with the annals of American literature, even if he had given no other proofs of his right to a place there. Cooper was in excellent spirits, though the disease which not long afterwards assumed so fatal a form, was just beginning to make itself felt. We walked out together, and, after a short stroll, went to his rooms at the Globe, and sat down to talk. We had never found him so free before upon the subject that interested us most-his own works and his literary habits. He talked about "Leather Stocking"-confessed freely his partiality for that exquisite creation of his happiest moments, and told how glad he had been to revive him again. "I meant," said he, "when I brought him on the stage anew, to have added one more scene and introduced him in the Revolution; but I thought that the public had had enough of him, and never ventured it." We tried to persuade him that the public interest had been excited, rather than satiated, by this resuscitation of their old favorite. "I have thought a good deal about it," said he, "and perhaps I may do it yet." But the works he had already in hand claimed his immediate attention, and before he found himself free for new labors, the progress of his disease had become too rapid to leave much room for other thoughts than those with which his mind, naturally inclined to devotion, had long been familiar.

Those who have read Cooper carefully will find, that in his

mind the religious sentiment, though never dormant, became stronger and more definite as he drew nearer to the grave. It has been truly said, that there is nothing in his works which could embitter his death-bed. From the first, they breathe a pure and healthy morality, and an earnest sense of higher duties and obligations. Nothing can be more beautiful than the religion of "Long Tom" and "Leather Stocking. There is a beautiful mixture of simplicity and grandeur in their conceptions of the Creator. They have studied Him in His own works; they recognize His power, for they have seen it manifested in its sublimest forms; they seem almost to grasp that sublimity itself in their strong conceptions, and read its awful lessons with a throbbing heart, but unaverted eye. They love Him, too-for they love the glorious works that He has made; and that love, pervading their whole nature, gives worth and estimation to the meanest production of His will. And from this arises a sense of duty so deep and so firm-a perception of right so instinctive and so true-such love of justice, and such fearlessness of purpose-that, without ceasing for a moment to be the humble coxswain or unlettered scout, they are men at whose feet the best and wisest may sit meekly and learn.

But these sentiments, which are merely scattered at intervals through his earlier works, are more clearly interwoven with the web and texture of the latter. The "Pathfinder" is everywhere devout; but "Hetty," in the "Deer Slayer," is formed of materials which required a strong religious conviction to handle aright. Genius might have formed some beautiful conception, but would never have given to it that truthfulness and nature, which almost make us forget the intellectual deficiencies of the poor maiden in the pure-hearted and earnest simplicity of the believer.

But it was not to attempt an analysis of Cooper, either as an author or as a man, that we took up our pen. What Bryant has done so happily in his address, as remarkable for the just conception which he had formed of his office, as for chastened beauty of execution, it would be presumption in us to

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repeat. We trust that some other friend of Cooper will follow the example of Dr. Francis, and give the world his recollections. The Doctor himself, while he lived, could he have found time, in the midst of his professional labors, to fill up the sketch which he began with so much good taste and such admirable judgment, would have added greatly to the important services which he has rendered to the cause of letters. Meanwhile we commend to the attention of our readers this beautiful edition of Cooper's Novels. They will, we are sure, find a place even in the most select libraries of American Literature.

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ART. IV.-MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.

The Rise of the Dutch Republic. A History. BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D. C. L. 3 Vols., 8vo. New York: 1859.

THE work of Mr. Motley supplies a want which the student of history has long lamented. It is surprising that the Rise of the Dutch Republic should have hitherto claimed no larger space in the literature of England and America; for no subject could be more interesting to a free people than the war which wrested the Netherlands from the grasp of Spain;-a war begun, not for political or commercial, but for religious interests; a war which eventuated in the rise of the Dutch to a splendid career of wealth and greatness, while it was to Spain the beginning of that series of disasters which led to her ultimate decline; a war, of which the obstinacy has been seldom equaled, and the ferocity of which had not been witnessed on the earth since Jerusalem fell before the arms of Vespasian. It is the design of the present paper to take a rapid review of the most prominent events in this great contest, from the Insurrection of Ghent, to the death of William, Prince of Orange.

Nor can we forbear all allusion to the country in which this war was waged, and to the origin of its inhabitants. For the country, our only surprise may be, that it should ever have been thought worth defending. No beauty of landscape, such as entrances the traveler in England, or Germany, or France; no towering mountains or vine-clad hills; no cloudless skies and balmy atmosphere, invite him to linger here. A land formed by the slime of rivers, low, wet, spongy, and often overwhelmed by the sea; vast plains, whose monotony is broken only by sluggish rivers; a leaden sky, and a climate always exhaling dampness,-such is no unfair picture of the land which has been aptly called Holland-" Hollow-land" or "marshy land." The people of this region are partly of German, partly of Celtic origin. The Belgae of Cæsars' time

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