by the rays of spring-promise that radiated around the young brow of his
daughter, which the dying veteran might well hope would be matured into
'glorious summer by the sun of' time. _Valeat signum_!

In calling Cooper the greatest of American novelists, we have not
incurred much risk of contradiction. Others may rival--some surpass
him--in this or that province of the art of fiction; but as a master of
the art in its broad aspect, he is _facile princeps_. Brockden Brown
treads a circle of mysterious power but mean circumference: Washington
Irving is admirable at a sketch, one of the liveliest and most graceful
of essayists, and quite equal to the higher demands of imaginative
prose--witness his _Rip Van Winkle_ and _Sleepy Hollow_--but his forte
is in miniature, and the orthodox dimensions of three volumes
post-octavo would suit him almost as ill as would the Athenian vesture
of Nick Bottom the spruce proportions of royal Oberon: Haliburton is
inimitable in his own line of things; his measure of wit and
humour--qualities unknown, or nearly so, to Cooper--is 'pressed down,
and shaken together, and running over;' but his 'mission' and Cooper's
in the tale-telling art are wide as the poles asunder: John Neale had
once, particularly by his own appraisement, a high repute as the
eccentric author of _Logan_ and _Seventy-six_, but the repute, like the
_Seventy-six_, is quite in the preterite tense now; and to review him
and his works at this time of day would be suspiciously like a
_post-mortem_ examination, resulting possibly in a verdict of temporary
insanity--if not, indeed, of _felo de se_--so wilful and wrongheaded
were the vagaries of this 'rough, egotistical Yankee,' as he has been
called: Herman Melville is replete with graphic power, and riots in the
exuberance of a fresh, racy style; but whether he can sustain the
'burden and heat' of a well-equipped and full-grown novel as deftly as
the fragmentary autobiographies he loves to indite; remains to be seen: