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Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 418
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 ended by his promising to write a sea-story which could be read by landsmen, while seamen should feel its truth. The Pilot was the result of that conversation.'3 Of this tale Scott says, in a letter to Miss Edgeworth: 'I have seen a new work, The Pilot, by the author of The Spy and The Pioneers. The hero is the celebrated Paul Jones, whom I well remember advancing above the island of Inchkeith, with three small vessels, to lay Leith under contribution.... The novel is a very clever one, and the sea-scenes and characters in particular are admirably drawn; and I advise you to read it as soon as possible.' Still higher panegyric would not have been misbestowed in this instance, which illustrates Mr Prescott's remark, that Cooper's descriptions of inanimate nature, no less than of savage man, are alive with the breath of poetry—'Witness his infinitely various pictures of the ocean; or, still more, of the beautiful spirit that rides upon its bosom, the gallant ship.' Though it is to The Pilot, pre-eminently, and The Waterwitch, in nearly an equal degree, that these remarks apply, there is many a passage in Cooper's later novels—for example, The Two Admirals, Homeward Bound, Mark's Reef, Ashore and Afloat, and The Sea-Lions—in which we recognise the same 'cunning' right hand which pencilled the Ariel, and its crew, the moody, mysterious pilot, and stalwart Long Tom Coffin.
Nor was he less at home in the backwoods and prairies of his fatherland, than upon the broad seas which divide it from the Old World. Tastes differ; and there are those—possibly the majority of his readers—who prefer the Indian associations of The Last of the Mohicans, The Pioneers, &c. to the salt-water scenery of the other class of works. For our part, we prefer his prairies to his savages, his forests to his aborigines, his inanimate to his living sketches of Indian story.[1] His wild men of the woods are often too sentimental, too dreamy, too ideal. In this respect Brockden Brown has the advantage of him; for, as Mr Prescott has pointed out, Brown shews the rude and uncouth lineaments of the Indian character, though he is chargeable with withholding intimations of a more generous nature. While Cooper discards all the coarser elements of savage life, and idealises the portrait. The first of this series of tales of
'Painted chiefs with pointed spears,'was The Pioneers—the materials for which, it seems, were to a considerable extent derived from his father, who had an interest in large tracts of land near the 'sources of the Susquehanna,' where the scene is laid, and allied, therefore, to Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming. It was speedily followed by The Last of the Mohicans—not uncommonly pronounced his chef d'oeuvre—and The Prairie; which, among numerous descriptions of absorbing interest, pervaded throughout by a fine imaginative spirit, contains one of thrilling power—where the squatter discovers and avenges the murder of his son. The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish—a strange story with a strange title, and which forms (chronologically at least) the climax of Cooper's fame—is justly admired by all who appreciate 'minute painting,' and that pensive monotony which begets a certain 'melancholy charm.' His skill in martial narrative was favorably attested in Lionel Lincoln; in which he describes with remarkable spirit and equal accuracy the battles of Lexington and of Bunker's Hill. But to go through in detail the opera omnia of our prolific author would involve us in difficulties with editor and reader too serious to bear anticipation. Passing over, therefore, such of his earlier writings as are better known—like The Red Rover, The Waterwitch, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer—we proceed to notice briefly a select few from the long series produced during the last ten years.
The Two Admirals is of unequal interest—the twin heroes, Sir Gervaise Oakes and Bluewater, engrossing whatever charm it possesses, and reacting disastrously on the tedious scenes wherein they bear no part; but they certainly do walk and talk like sound-hearted sons of Neptune, and there is no resisting the spell of the battle and the breeze which they encounter together, in the Plantagenet and the Cæsar. The Jack o' Lantern, or the Privateer, was put forth with an expression of the author's conviction that his faculty in this class of fictions was inexhaustible; to which, however, the critics demurred. One of them observed that, following out the fantastical supposition which ascribes especial virtues to certain numbers, or even working out the analogy of the seventh wave, which sea-shore gossips tell us is ampler and stronger than its predecessors, the seventh sea-novel of Mr Cooper's ought to be the most remarkable of the series for force, brilliancy, and movement. But such symbolism was here found defective: the seventh wave broke abruptly on the shore; the Jack o' Lantern's existence has been brief and uncertain as that of the ignis fatuus on the marsh. The story introduces Caraccioli and the Neapolitan court, Nelson and Lady Hamilton; but without striking points. There are some cleverly-drawn characters, however: Clinch, the drunken but winning British tar; Raoul Yvard, brilliant, handsome, and Parisian all over, philosophism included; and Ithuel Bolt, a new (not improved) edition of Long Tom. The plot is ingenious, though perhaps, constrained and far-fetched; and its dénouement makes the reader put down the third volume with increased respect for the novelist's tact. Wyandotte, or the Hutted Knoll (1843), is a quiet yet animated narrative, descriptive of a family of British settlers and their fortunes in their wild Susquehanna home. There is a pleasure, the author observes, in diving into a virgin forest, and commencing the labours of civilisation, that has no exact parallel in any other human occupation; and some refracted share of this pleasure is secured by every intelligent reader while engaged in perusing records so faithful and characteristic as those embodied in this tale. Ravensnest, with no lack of scenic embellishments, introduces to us three of the author's happiest characters—always excepting Leatherstocking and Long Tom—namely, the two Littlepages, 'Captain Hugh' and his 'Uncle Ro,' and Mistress Opportunity Newcome. The didactic asperities in which he indulged naturally marred the fortune of a book whose readers, whatever they might be, were pretty safely 'booked' for a scolding. Otherwise, it gleamed with scintillations, neither faint nor few, of the light of other days. But it was evident that Mr Cooper was overwriting himself. He seemed determined not to be outdone in fecundity by the most prolific of his contemporaries—as though it were a safe speculation or a healthy emulation to run against such light horsemen and horsewomen as Mr James and M. Dumas, and Mesdames Gore and Trollope. Hence he might have appropriately echoed the complaint of the slave in Terence: 'Parum succedit quod ago, at facio sedulò.'
In 1847, he produced Mark's Reef, a story of the Crusoe genus, but far behind; the desert island being created 'positively for this occasion only,' and being swallowed up in the sea again when it has served Mark Woolston and the novelist's requirements. It is characterised, however, by much glowing description—especially that relating to the crater, with its noble peak, 'ever the same amid the changes of time, and civilisation, and decay; naked, storm-beaten, and familiar to the eye.' The following year he was ready with The Bee-Hunter, wherein he sought to revive his pristine successes among American solitudes and Red 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 intervals a 'serried phalanx' of others, from the ranks of which suffice it to name The Heidenmauer, The Bravo, The Manikins (a weak and injudicious tale, quite unworthy of his honourable reputation), The Headsman of Berne, Mercedes of Castille, Satanstoe, Home as Found, Ashore and Afloat. In miscellaneous literature his writings include a History of the Navy of the United States, Lives of Distinguished Naval Officers, Sketches of Switzerland, Gleanings in Europe, and Notions of the Americans.
It is by his early tales of wilderness and ocean life that he will survive. There his genius is fresh, vigorous, natural—uncramped by restraints, undeformed by excrescences, uninterrupted by crotchets, such as injured its aftergrowth—the swaddling-clothes of its second childhood. If we have spoken freely—we hope not flippantly—of these feeblenesses, it is because the renown of Cooper is too tenaciously and permanently rooted to be 'radically' affected thereby, however they may diminish the symmetry and dim the verdure of blossom and branch. His magnificent panoramas of prairie solitude, his billowy expanses of the 'many-voiced sea,' his artistically-grouped figures of red-skins and trappers, sealers and squatters, are among the things which Anglo-Saxon literature in either hemisphere will not willingly let die. By these he is, and long will be, known and read of all men. And if ever Mr Macaulay's New Zealander should ponder over the ruins of Broadway, as well as of St Paul's, he will probably carry in his pocket one of those romances which tell how the Last of the Mohicans came to his end, and which illustrate the closing destinies of tribes which shall then have disappeared before the chill advance of the Pale Face.
WHY DOES THE PENDULUM SWING?
The attention of the visitor to the recent Exhibition in Hyde Park was arrested, as he advanced westwards down the central promenade of the building, by a large clock busily at work marking off the seconds of passing time. That piece of mechanism had a remarkably independent and honest look of its own. The inmost recesses of its breast were freely bared to the inspection of every passer-by. As if aware of the importance of the work intrusted to its care, it went on telling, in the midst of the ever-changing and bustling crowd, with a bold and unhesitating click, the simple fact it knew; and that there might be no mistake, it registered what it told in palpable signs transmitted through the features of its own stolid face. Mr Dent's great clock was by no means the least distinguished object in the collection of the world's notabilities.
But there was one thing which nearly concerned that industrious and trusty monitor that he surely could not have known, or his quiet countenance would have shewn traces of perturbation. He was doing Exhibition work, but he was not keeping Exhibition time. The wonderful building in which he had taken up his temporary residence was, in fact, of too cosmopolitan a nature to have a time of its own. Its entire length measured off very nearly 1-42,000th part of the circle of terrestrial latitude along which it stretched. The meridian of the Liverpool Model was close upon thirty seconds of space farther west than the meridian of the Greek Slave. Imagine the surface of Hyde Park to have been marked off, before Messrs Fox and Henderson's workmen commenced their labours, by lines running north and south at the equal distance of a second of a degree from each other, just as one sees the surface of large maps traced by meridians, nearly thirty of those lines would then have been covered in by the east and west span of the crystal roof. Mr Dent's clock might have been set to the precise time of the Greek Slave, and it would yet have been nearly two seconds wrong by the time of the Liverpool Model. The pendulum swinging so steadily within its case had a longer and more stately stride than most of its congeners. It took a second and a half of time to complete its step from side to side. But notwithstanding this, if a string had been suddenly stretched across in space above the east end of the building, and left there in free suspension, independent of all connection with the terrestrial surface, it would have taken longer for the huge structure to be trailed beneath it by the earth's rotation—swift as that rotation is—than it did for the sober and leisurely mass of metal to finish its beat from side to side.
Our immediate business, however, at this present time is not with the geographical relations of Mr Paxton's building, but rather with that sober and leisurely-moving mass—the pendulum. Even in the seventeenth century, old Graunt was shocked when some irreverent babbler spoke of one of its honourable race by the rude epithet of 'a swing-swang;' and he penned an indignant protest on the subject to the Royal Society. Since that time the pendulum has done much more to merit the reverence of the world. Plain and simple as its outward bearing is, it really holds a high and dignified position in the annals of science.
Instead, however, of touching upon its pedigree and achievements, we proceed at once to speak of certain interesting peculiarities that enter as an element into all considerations in which it has concern. In the first place, what is that characteristic motion which it so constantly assumes—that restless swinging from side to side? Is it a property inherent in its own nature, or is it a power communicated to it from without? There is a train of wheelwork enclosed with it in the case. Is that the source of its vibratile mobility? Assuredly not. For if we arrest its motion with our hand at the instant that its form hangs perpendicularly suspended, that motion is not renewed although the wheels remain in unaltered relation. Those mechanical contrivances clearly do not comprise the secret of its swinging. We must look elsewhere if we would ascertain the fundamental cause.
Has the reader ever looked at the plain white building, with successive rows of little windows, which so often spans the breadth of our smaller streams? If he has, the thought has at once arisen that within those walls huge wheels and heavy-revolving stones remorselessly tear and crush to powder heaps upon heaps of yellow grain, with a power that is equal to the combined effort of a whole troop of horses concentred in the task. But we question very much whether he has as clearly seen whence those clattering wheels derive their many horse-power! If we were to ask him to tell us how they acquired their rolling strength, he would most probably answer—from the current of the stream. This reply would amount to nothing in the matter of explanation; the force of the current is as much a borrowed attribute as the force of the wheelwork. The running water is no more an independent and living agent than is the machinery which it turns. Beyond both is the one grand determining influence—the attractive energy inherent in the substance of the vast earth. This it is which makes the water run; this it is which enables the running water to move the wheelwork inserted into its channel. As the magnet draws to itself the fragment of steel, the earth draws to itself all ponderable matter; and whenever ponderable matter is free to move, it rushes as far as it can go towards the centre of the earth's substance, in obedience to the summons. Mobile water runs down from a higher to a lower level because the latter is nearer to the earth's centre than the former, and as it falls it pushes before it such minor obstructions as are unable to resist the influence of its weight. The float-boards of the mill-wheel are of this nature; they are striving to uphold the water by means of the rubbing and friction of the apparatus that is mechanically connected with the axle. But the resistance of the friction is less than the strength with which the earth tugs at the water, and therefore the wheel goes round and the water rushes down. The force which really grinds the hard corn into flour it terrestrial attraction! Gravitation of material substance towards material substance, acting with an energy proportioned to the relative masses and to the relative distances of the elements concerned.
Let us now suppose that the matter drawn towards the earth is not free to move. Let us fancy, for instance, a drop of the running water all at once stopped in its downward path by the attachment of a string from above. The earth would then tug at that string in its effort to get the drop of water, and would consequently stretch it to a certain extent. The power that was before expended in causing the drop to move, would be now employed in striving to tear asunder the substance of the string. A heavy body hanging by a cord from a fixed point is then in this predicament. It is drawn towards the earth, but is prevented from moving to it. It consequently finds a position of rest in which it is placed as near to the source of attraction as the suspending string allows; that is, it hangs perpendicularly and immovably beneath it, stretching the string by its tendency toward the ground.
If, however, the suspended body be raised up from its position of forced repose by any interference that draws it to one side, the string being still kept on the stretch, it will be observed that it has been made to move in a curved line away from the earth's attracting mass, and that the pull of the attraction is then to a certain extent taken off from the string and transferred to the supporting hand; the force of the attraction consequently becomes then sensible as the weight of the body that is upheld. If in this state of affairs the supporting hand is taken away, the body at once rushes down sideways to the position it before occupied, with a pace accelerating considerably as it goes; for the earth continues to attract it during each instant of its descent. When it has reached the second stage of its journey, it is moving with a velocity that is caused by the addition of the attraction exercised in that stage to the attraction that had been exercised in the first stage; and so of the third, fourth, and other successive stages. It must go quicker and quicker until it comes to the place which was before its position of absolute repose.
But when it has at last arrived at this place, it cannot rest there, for during its increasingly-rapid journey downwards, it has been perseveringly acquiring a new force of its own—an onward impulse that proves to be sufficient to carry it forward and upward in spite of the earth's pressing solicitation to it to stay. Moving bodies can no more stop of their own accord than resting bodies can move of their own accord. Both require that some extraneous force shall be exerted upon them before the condition in which they are can be changed.
Now, in the case of the vibrating pendulum, it is the downward pull of the earth's attraction that first causes the stationary body to move, and as this commencing motion is downwards, in the direction of the pull, it is also an accelerating one. As soon, however, as this motion is changed by the resistance of the string into an upward one, it becomes a retarded one from the same cause. The body is now going upwards, away from the earth, and the earth's attraction therefore drags upon it and keeps it back instead of hastening it. As it travels up in its curved path, more and more of its weight is taken off the string, and thrown, so to speak, upon the moving impulse. In the descending portion of the vibration the weight of the body increases its movement; in the ascending portion it diminishes its movement. At last the upward movement becomes so slow, that the impulse of momentum is lost, and the earth's attraction is again unopposed. The body then begins to retrograde, acquires progressively increasing velocity as it descends, overshoots the place of its original repose, and once more commences the ascent on the opposite side.
Whenever, then, a heavy body suspended by a flexible string is drawn to one side, and dropped from the hand, a vibrating pendulum is made, because weight and acquired impulse influence it alternately with a sort of see-saw action, the power of the one diminishing as the power of the other augments. Weight pulls down—confers velocity and impulse during the pulling—and then velocity carries up. As velocity carries up, weight diminishes its impulse, and at last arrests it, and then begins to pull down again. In the middle of the vibration velocity is at its greatest, and weight at its least, as regards their influence on the motion. At the extremes of the vibration velocity is at its least, and weight at its greatest. Now here it is the earth's attraction clearly that confers the impulse of the downward movement, just as much as it is the earth's attraction that causes the downward movement of running water. Therefore the power which makes the pendulum swing is the same with the power which grinds the corn in the water-mill—the attraction of the earth's vast mass for the mass of a smaller body placed near to its surface under certain peculiar conditions of position.
But there is a very startling reflection connected with this consideration. How strange it is that the vast 'substantial fabric' of the earth should, after all, present itself as one grand source of motion in terrestrial things! Gravitation, weight, the majestic influence that holds the stable pyramid upon its base through centuries of time, condescending to turn the restless wheels of man's machinery! When the expansive burst of the vapour confined within the cylinder of the condensing steam-engine thrusts upwards the piston-rod with its mighty beams, it is simple weight—the weight of the superincumbent transparent atmosphere—that crushes the metal back with antagonistic force. When particles of water have been sublimated into the air by the heating power of the solar rays, it is simple weight—the weight of their own aqueous substance—that brings them down again, and that causes their falling currents to turn the countless mill-wheels implanted in the direction of their descent. When isolated tracts of the atmosphere have been rendered rare and light under the concentrated warmth of the sun, it is simple weight—the weight of colder and heavier portions of the air—that makes winds rush into the spots where the deficient downward pressure is, and that causes the sails of innumerable windmills to whirl before the impulse of the breeze.
