editor of The Illustrated London News wrote:  “I am almost inclined to agree with Thackeray in liking Hawkeye ‘better than any of Scott’s lot.’  What noble stories those five are in which the hero is described from youth to age!” From “Thackeray in the United States,” by General James Grant Wilson, comes:  “At an American dinner table” (the talk was of Cooper and his writings) “Thackeray pronounced Leatherstocking the greatest character created in fiction since the Don Quixote of Cervantes”; and he thought the death scene in “The Prairie,” where the old trapper said “Here!” surpassing anything he had “met in English literature.”

[Illustration:  NATTY’S LAST CALL.]

Of Natty’s answer to the Spirit Land call Cooper’s own words are:  “The trapper was placed on a rude seat, which had been made, with studied care, to support his frame in an upright and easy attitude—­so as to let the light of the setting sun fall full upon the solemn features.  His head was bare, the long, thin locks of gray fluttering lightly in the evening breeze.  The first glance of the eye told his former friends that the old man was at length called upon to pay the last tribute of nature.  The trapper had remained nearly motionless for an hour.  His eyes alone had occasionally opened and shut.  When opened, his gaze seemed fastened on the clouds which hung around the western horizon, reflecting the bright colors, and giving form and loveliness to the glorious tints of an American sunset.  The hour—­the calm beauty of the season—­the occasion, all conspired to fill the spectators with solemn awe.  Suddenly, while musing on the remarkable position in which he was placed, Middleton felt the hand which he held grasp his own with incredible power, and the old man, supported on either side by his friends, rose upright to his feet.  For a moment he looked about him, as if to invite all in presence to listen (the lingering remnant of human frailty), and then, with a fine military elevation of the head, and with a voice that might be heard in every part of that numerous assembly, he pronounced the word—­’Here!’

“When Middleton and Hard Heart, each of whom had involuntarily extended a hand to support the form of the old man, turned to him again, they found that the subject of their interest was removed forever beyond the necessity of their care.”

Concerning social life Cooper wrote:  “Taking into consideration our tastes and my health, the question has been, not how to get into, but how to keep out of, the great world.”  But for the happy chance of inquiry at the gate of a friend, the author would “have dined with the French Lord-High-Chancellor, without the smallest suspicion of who he was!” Of French women Cooper adds:  “The highest style of French beauty is classical.  I cannot recall a more lovely picture than the Duchess de——­[this title and blank are said to veil the identity of the Princess Galitzin] in full dress at a carnival ball, where she shone peerless among hundreds of the elite of Europe.  And yet this woman was a grandmother!”