social economy. Few things can be more inspiriting, more energetic, more
impressive, than his pictures of

'A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
A wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail,
And bends the gallant mast;'

for we see in every stroke that the world of waters is his home, and
that to _his_ ear there is music in the wild piping of the wind, and
that _his_ eye beams afresh when it descries tempest in the horned moon,
and lightning in the cloud. To him the ocean is indeed 'a glorious
mirror,' where the form of the Highest 'glasses itself in tempests;'
dear to him it is

------'in all time,
Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm;
....Boundless, endless, and sublime--
The image of Eternity--the throne
Of the Invisible.'

Well might one who had lived six years on her swelling bosom, combine
with his love 'of the old sea some reverential fear,' as Wordsworth has
it. This compound feeling is highly effective in his marine fictions, so
instinct is it with the reality of personal experience. Mr Griswold
tells us that Cooper informed him as follows of the origin of _The
Pilot_: 'Talking with the late Charles Wilkes of New York, a man of
taste and judgment, our author [Cooper] heard extolled the universal
knowledge of Scott, and the sea-portions of _The Pirate_ cited as a
proof. He laughed at the idea, as most seamen would, and the discussion