Indians. Again we hear the palaver of the stately and sentimental
Chippewas; and again we watch, with sadly-relaxed attention, the dodging
extraordinary of Pale Faces and Red Men. Alas!

'Both of them speak of something that is gone:...
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?'

The Indians have become comparatively seedy and second-hand individuals;
the scenery, with occasional exceptions, looks worn; the machinery
creaks and betrays itself, no longer possessing the _ars celare artem_.
''Tis true, 'tis pity; pity 'tis, 'tis true.' One novelty, nevertheless,
this tale can boast, and that is the very able and interesting sketch of
the bee-hunter following his vocation in the 'oak-openings;' nor is the
portrait of Buzzing Ben himself an ordinary daub. In 1849 appeared _The
Sea-Lions_, a clever but often prolix work, which ought to keep up its
interest with the public, if only for its elaborate painting of scenes
to which the protracted mystery of Sir John Franklin's expedition has
imparted a melancholy charm. The sufferings of sealers and grasping
adventurers among 'thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice' are recounted
with dramatic earnestness. _The Ways of the Hour_ was both 'nominally'
and 'really' Cooper's last novel: he announced it as such; and the
announcement was not related to that fallacious category to which belong
the 'more last nights' of popular tragedians, and the farewell prefaces
of the accomplished author of _Rienzi_. It was not the 'going, going!'
but the 'gone!' of the auctioneer. And critics maliciously said: _Tant
mieux_. In _The Ways of the Hour_ there was one vigorous portrait, Mary
Monson, and several 'moving accidents by flood and field:' but with
these positive qualities the reader had to accept an unlimited stock of
negatives. Besides the works thus referred to, Cooper wrote at short