were found the backwoodsman, the hunter, and the half-civil. ized Indian. The deep impression made upon young Cooper's mind by the wild scenery and unsettled life about him is shown in the fact that he located three of his novels in this region. Cooper's education presents the melancholy story so often met with in the lives of literary men. He took but little interest in his studies. His first instruction was received in the academy at Cooperstown, where, in spite of its pretentious name, the teaching was crude. He afterwards studied in Albany as a private pupil under an Episcopal rector. At the age of thirteen, Cooper entered the Freshman class at Yale, the youngest student but one in the college. According to his own confession, he played all the first year, and there is nothing to show that he did better afterwards. In place of digging at his Latin and Greek, he delighted in taking long walks about the wooded hills and beautiful bay of New Haven. Nature was more to him than books, a preference that college faculties are generally slow to appreciate. At last in his third year he engaged in some mischief that led to his dismissal from the college. This failure in his education was peculiarly unfortunate. His lack of a refined and scholarly taste has tolerated in his works a crudeness of form that largely detracts from their excellence. It was now decided that Cooper should enter the navy. The influence of his father, who was a prominent Federalist and had been for several years a member of Congress, promised a speedy advancement. He began his apprenticeship (there was no naval academy then) in the merchant marine, and served a year before the mast. He entered the navy as midshipman in January, 1808. He was stationed for a time on Lake Ontario, where he imbibed the impressions afterwards embodied in the graphic descriptions of "The Pathfinder." In 1809 he was transferred to the Wasp, then under the command of Lawrence, a hero to whom he was warmly attached. The details of his naval career are scanty. Though it does not appear that he was engaged in any thrilling events, he accumulated a large store of incident, and acquired a technical knowledge, which were afterwards turned to good account in his admirable sea stories. His naval career was cut short by his falling in love. In January, 1811, he married a Miss De Lancey, a lady of Huguenot family, and five months later he tendered his resignation in the navy. He made no unworthy choice, and his domestic life appears to have been singularly happy. With a sufficiently strong, not to say obstinate, will, and with high notions of masculine prerogative in the family, he was still largely controlled by the delicate tact of his wife, who always retained a strong hold upon his large and tender heart. For some time after his marriage he was unsettled. He first resided in Westchester County, New York; then he moved to Cooperstown, where he spent the next three years; afterwards he returned to Westchester, and occupied a house that commanded a view of Long Island Sound. Up to this time his chief occupation had been farming; and he had shown no sign whatever either of an inclination or of an ability to write. His entrance upon a literary career appears to have been the merest accident. He was one day reading to his wife a novel descriptive of English society. It did not please him; and at last, laying it down with some impatience, he exclaimed: "I believe I could write a better story myself." Challenged to make good his boast, he at once set himself to the task. It did not occur to him to treat an American theme with which he was familiar. America had achieved her political but not her intellectual independence of the mother country. He accordingly produced a novel of high life in England, which, under the title of "Precaution," was published in 1820. It did not occur to him as an obstacle that he knew nothing about English life. The day of an exacting realism had not yet come, and men were still permitted to write of things that they knew nothing about. Of course the work was a failure; out it came so near being a success that Cooper was encouraged to try his hand again. This time he chose an American subject, and without knowing it fell into the vocation for which his talents eminently fitted him. Years before, at the house of John Jay, he had heard the story of a Revolutionary spy that deeply impressed him. This story he made the basis of his novel; and the scene he laid in Westchester, with which his long residence had made him familiar, and which had been a battleground for the British and American armies. He had but little expectation of its favorable reception. He doubted whether his countrymen would read a book that treated of familiar scenes and interests. The result undeceived him, and fixed him in the career to which he was to give the rest of his life. "The Spy" appeared at the close of 1821, and in a short time met with a sale that was pronounced unprecedented in the annals of American literature. It was received with the enthusiasm that greeted the successive Waverley novels in England. The transatlantic verdict, which was awaited with something of servile trepidation, confirmed the American judgment. "Genius in America," said Blackwood, "must keep to America to achieve any great work. Cooper has done so, and taken his place among the most powerful of the imaginative spirits of the age." "The Spy" was soon translated into several European languages; and, in short, it made Cooper's reputation at home and abroad. His next work was "The Pioneers," which was published in 1823. The scene is laid at the author's early home on Otsego Lake, and describes not only the natural scenery, but also the types of character and modes of living with which he became familiar in childhood. In producing this work he drew less upon his imagination than upon his memory. As we read his life, it is not difficult to discover the originals of some of his leading portraits. The book was written, as he has told us, exclusively to please himself; and he has dwelt upon separate scenes and incidents with such fondness as seriously to |