1829] JAMES FENIMORE-COOPER 175

part of every nation. The department of literature which
you have for the most part adopted is one that enables
you to impress most forcibly on the mind the truths you
may wish to inculcate. The skill with which you embody
the passions and exemplify their operation and effects,
the genius which enables you to give to fiction all the
interest of reality, the knowledge of human nature by
which you detect and expose the most secret workings
of the mind, and the command of language and descrip-
tive powers you possess, to throw into the most interest-
ing form the incidents your fancy creates, all these fit you
in the most eminent degree for the task I propose. It is
that of exemplifying (in a work written expressly with
that view) the evils of capital punishment. One of the
most prominent among them (its irremediable nature)
seems to me to offer the finest field for a display of your
powers in describing the effects of an erroneous judgment
founded on false or mistaken testimony—the unavailing
efforts of conscious innocence; its uncredited association,
its despair; the remorse of the mistaken jurors and judge
when the falsity of the charge is discovered too late for
redress; the chain of circumstances by which guilt was
presumed or the motives for the perjury by which it was
asserted, in your hand, might be worked up into a picture
that would cause the hardiest advocate for capital pun-
ishment to pause in his desire to inflict it, and I will
answer for it, would not disgrace the master hand that
drew it.

I forget however, that you may not be a convert to my
Doctrine, or may have other reasons for declining my
proposal. Should either of these be the case, I shall
lament my want of success, but feel no apprehension of
your mistaking my motive or disapproving it wheny all the readingappeareen brought out by you, it might have escaped