German’s camel, he is evolved from the depth of the writer’s own consciousness.  The poet takes the most delicate sentiments and the finest emotions of civilization and cultivation, and grafts them upon the best qualities of savage life; which is as if a painter should represent an oak-tree bearing roses.  The life of the North-American Indian, like that of all men who stand upon the base-line of civilization, is a constant struggle, and often a losing struggle, for mere subsistence.  The sting of animal wants is his chief motive of action, and the full gratification of animal wants his highest ideal of happiness.  The “noble savage,” as sketched by poets, weary of the hollowness, the insincerity, and the meanness of artificial life, is really a very ignoble creature, when seen in the “open daylight” of truth.  He is selfish, sensual, cruel, indolent, and impassive.  The highest graces of character, the sweetest emotions, the finest sensibilities,—­which make up the novelist’s stock in trade,—­are not and cannot be the growth of a so-called state of Nature, which is an essentially unnatural state.  We no more believe that Logan ever made the speech reported by Jefferson, in so many words, than we believe that Chatham ever made the speech in reply to Walpole which begins with, “The atrocious crime of being a young man”; though we have no doubt that the reporters in both cases had something fine and good to start from.  We accept with acquiescence, nay, with admiration, such characters as Magua, Chingachgook, Susquesus, Tamenund, and Canonchet; but when we come to Uncas, in “The Last of the Mohicans,” we pause and shake our heads with incredulous doubt.  That a young Indian chief should fall in love with a handsome quadroon like Cora Munro—­for she was neither more nor less than that—­is natural enough; but that he should manifest his passion with such delicacy and refinement is impossible.  We include under one and the same name all the affinities and attractions of sex, but the appetite of the savage differs from the love of the educated and civilized man as much as charcoal differs from the diamond.  The sentiment of love, as distinguished from the passion, is one of the last and best results of Christianity and civilization:  in no one thing does savage life differ from civilized more than in the relations between man and woman, and in the affections that unite them.  Uncas is a graceful and beautiful image; but he is no Indian.

We turn now to a more gracious part of our task, and proceed to say something of the many striking excellences which distinguish Cooper’s writings, and have given him such wide popularity.  Popularity is but one test of merit, and not the highest,—­gauging popularity by the number of readers, at any one time, irrespective of their taste and judgment.  In this sense, “The Scottish Chiefs” and “Thaddeus of Warsaw” were once as popular as any of the Waverley Novels.  But Cooper’s novels have enduring merit, and will surely keep their place in