TO THE MOCKING-BIRD. Wing'd mimic of the woods! thou motley fool! Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe ! Thine ever ready notes of ridicule Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. Wit, sophist, songster, YORICK of thy tribe, Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school; To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, Arch-mocker and mad Abbot of Misrule! For such thou art by day-but all night long Thou pour'st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain, As if thou didst in this thy moonlight song Like to the melancholy JACQUES complain, Musing on falsehood, folly, vice, and wrong, And sighing for thy motley coat again. STANZAS. My life is like the summer rose That opens to the morning sky, Is scatter'd on the ground-to die! That trembles in the moon's pale ray, Its hold is frail-its date is brief, Restless and soon to pass away! Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade, The parent tree will mourn its shade, The winds bewail the leafless tree, But none shall breathe a sigh for me! My life is like the prints, which feet Have left on Tampa's desert strand; Soon as the rising tide shall beat, All trace will vanish from the sand; Yet, as if grieving to efface All vestige of the human race, On that lone shore loud moans the sea, alas! shall mourn for me! But none, JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER was born at Burlington, New Jersey, September 15, 1789. He was the descendant of an English family who settled at that place in 1679. His father, Judge William Cooper, was born in Pennsylvania, whither a portion of the family had removed, but in early life selected the old family home at Burlington as his residence. He was a man of high social position, and became possessed in 1785 of a large tract of land in the neighborhood of Otsego lake, in the State of New York. A settlement was formed to which he gave the name of Cooperstown, and in 1790 removed his family thither. He was the leading man of the place, and in 1795 and 1799 represented the district in Congress. It was in this frontier home surrounded by noble scenery, and a population composed of adventurous settlers, hardy trappers, and the remnant of the noble Indian tribes who were once sole lords of the domain, that the novelist passed his boyhood to his thirteenth year. It was a good school for his future calling. At the age mentioned he entered Yale College, where he remained three years, maintaining notwithstanding his youth a good position in his class, when he obtained a midshipman's commission and entered the navy. The six following years of his life were passed in that servics, and he was thus early and thoroughly familiarized with the second great field of his future literary career. In 1811 he resigned his commission, married Miss De Lancey, a member of an old and leading family of the State of New York, and sister to the present bishop of its western diocese, and settled down to a home life in the village of Mamaroneck, near the city of New York. It was not long after that, almost accidentally, his literary career commenced. He had been reading an English novel to his wife, when, on laying aside the book, he remarked that he believed that he could write a better story himself. He forthwith proceeded to test the matter, and produced Precaution. The manuscript was completed, he informs us, without any intention of publication. He was, however, induced by the advice of his wife, and his friend Charles Wilkes, in whom he placed great confidence, to issue the work. It appeared, sadly deformed by misprints. Precaution is a story on the old pattern of English rural life, the scene alternating between the hall, the parsonage, and other upper-class regions of a country town. A scene on the deck of a man-of-war, bringing her prizes into port, is almost the only indication of the writer's true strength. It is a respectable novel, offering little or no scope for comment, and was slightly valued then or afterwards by its author. In 1821 he published The Spy, a Tale of the Neutral Ground, a region familiar to him by his residence within its borders. Harvey Birch, the spy, is a portrait from life of a revolutionary patriot, who was willing to risk his life and to subject his character to temporary suspicion for the service of his country. He appears in the novel as a pedlar, with a keen eye to trade as well as the movements of the enemy. The claim of Enoch Crosby, a native of Danbury, who was employed in this manner in the war, to be the original of this character, has been set forth with much show of probability by a writer, Captain H. L. Barnum, in a small volume entitled The Spy Unmasked, containing an interesting biography, but the matter has never been definitively settled, Cooper leaving the subject in doubt in the preface to the revised edition of the novel in 1849. The rugged, homely worth of Harvey Birch, his native shrewdness combined with heroic boldness, which develops itself in deeds, not in the heroic speeches which an ordinary novelist would have placed in his mouth, the dignified presentation of Washington in the slight disguise of the assumed name of Harper, the spirit of the battle scenes and hairbreadth escapes which abound in the narrative, the pleasant and truthful home scenes of the country mansion, place the Spy in the foremost rank of fiction. Its patriotic theme, a novelty at the time in the works of American romance, aided the impression made by its intrinsic merits. It was followed, two years later, by The Pioneers; or, the Sources of the Susquehanna, a Descriptive Tale. In this the author drew on the early recollections of his life. He has described with minuteness the scenery which surrounded his father's residence, and probably some of its visitors and occupants. The best known character of the story is the world-renowned Leatherstocking, the noble pioneer, the chevalier of the woods. The author has aimed in this character at combining the heroic with the practical. Leather-stocking has the rude dialect of a backwoodsman, unformed, almost uneducated, by schools. He is before us in his native simplicity and native vigor, as free from the trickery of art as the trees which surround him. He was a new actor on the crowded stage of fiction, who at once commanded hearing and applause. The Pioneers well redeems its title of a descriptive tale, by its animated presentation of the vigorous and picturesque country life of its time and place, and its equally successful delineations of natural scenery. The Pilot, the first of the sea novels, next appeared. It originated from a conversation of the author with his friend Wilkes on the naval inaccuracies of the recently published novel of the Pirate. Cooper's attention thus drawn to this field of composition, he determined to see how far he could meet his own requirements. The work extended its writer's reputation, not only by showing the new field of which he was master, but by its evidences, surpassing any he had yet given, of power and energy. The ships, with whose fortunes we have to do in this story, interest us like creatures of flesh and blood. We watch the chase and the fight like those who have a personal interest in the conflict, as if ourselves a part of the crew, with life and honor in the issue. Long Tom Coffin is probably the most widely-known sailor character in existence. He is an example of the heroic in action, like Leather-stocking losing not a whit of his individuality of body and mind in his nobleness of soul. Lionel Lincoln, the next novel, was a second attempt in the revolutionary field of the Spy, which did not share in treatment or reception with its success. It was followed in the same year by The Last of the Mohicans, a Narrative of 1757, in which we again meet Leather-stocking, in an early age of his career, and find the Indians, of whom we have had occasional glimpses in the Pioneers, in almost undisturbed possession of their huntinggrounds. In this story Cooper increased his hold on the young, the true public of the romantic novelist, by the spirit of his delineations of forest life. He has met objections which have been raised by maturer critics to his representations of the Aborigines in this and other works, in the following passage in the "Preface to the Leatherstocking Tales," published in 1850. It has been objected to these books that they give a more favorable picture of the red man than he deserves. The writer apprehends that much of this objection arises from the habits of those who have made it. One of his critics, on the appearance of the first work in which Indian character was por trayed, objected that its "characters were Indians of the school of Heckewelder, rather than of the school of nature." These words quite probably contain the substance of the true answer to the objection. Heckewelder was an ardent, benevolent missionary, bent on the good of the red man, and seeing in him one who had the soul, reason, and characteristics of a fellow-being. The critic is understood to have been a very distinguished agent of the government, one very familiar with Indians, as they are seen at the councils to treat for the sale of their lands, where little or none of their domestic qualities come in play, and where indeed their evil passions are known to have the fullest scope. As just would it be to draw conclusions of the general state of American society from the scenes of the capital, as to suppose that the negotiating of one of these treaties is a fair picture of Indian life. It is the privilege of all writers of fiction, more particularly when their works aspire to the elevation of romances, to present the beau-ideal of their characters to the reader. This it is which constitutes poetry, and to suppose that the red man is to be represented only in the squalid misery or in the degraded moral state that certainly more or less belongs to his condition, is, we apprehend, taking a very narrow view of an author's privileges. Such criticism would have deprived the world of even Homer. In the same year Cooper visited Europe, having received a little before his departure the honor of a public dinner in the city of New York. He passed several years abroad, and was warmly welcomed in every country he visited, his works being already as well known, through translations, in foreign languages as in his own. He owed this wide-spread fame to his wisdom in the selection of topics. He was read by those who wished to learn something of the aboriginal and pioneer life of America, in the eyes of Europeans the characteristic features of the country; and it is a common remark of the educated class of German emigrants in this country, that they derived their first knowledge, and perhaps their first interest in their future home, from his pages. Cooper's literary activity was not impaired by his change of scene. He published in 1827 The Prairie. Leather-stocking reappears and closes his career in its pages. "Pressed upon by time, he has ceased to be the hunter and the warrior, and has become a trapper of the great West. The sound of the axe has driven him from his beloved forests to seek a refuge, by a species of desperate resignation, on the denuded plains that stretch to the Rocky Mountains. Here he passes the few closing years of his life, dying as he had lived, a philosopher of the wilderness, with few of the failings, none of the vices, and all the na ture and truth of his position."* The descriptions of natural scenery, the animated scenes with the Indians, and the rude vigor of the emigrant family, render this one of the most successful of the novelist's productions. In the same year, The Red Rover appeared, a second sea novel, which shared the success of the Pilot, a work which it fully equals in animation and perhaps surpasses in romantic interest. In 1828 Cooper published Notions of the Americans, by a Travelling Bachelor. It purports to be a book of travels in the United States, and is designed to correct the many erroneous impressions which he found prevalent in English society, regarding his country. It is an able refutation of the slanders of the penny-a-line tourists who had so sorely tried the American temper, and contains a warm-hearted eulogy of the people and institutions of his country. It was at the time of publication of this work that Halleck coupled a humorous reference to it with his noble tribute to the novelist, in the commencement of his poem of Red Jacket Cooper, whose name is with his country's woven, And beautiful as its green world of thought; And faithful to the Act of Congress, quoted As law authority, it passed nem. con.: He writes that we are, as ourselves have voted, That all our week is happy as a Sunday In Paris, full of song, and dance, and laugh; And furthermore-in fifty years, or sooner, * His next novel, published in 1829, was The Wept of Wish-ton- Wish. He was in Paris at the breaking out of the Revolution of 1830, and suggested a plan to La Fayette, with whom he was very intimate, that Henry V. should be recognised as King, and educated as a constitutional monarch, that the peerage should be abolished, and replaced by a senate to be elected by the general vote of the whole nation, the lower house being chosen by the departments a scheme which combines the stability of an uninterrupted hereditary descent with a proper scope for political progress, two elements that have not as yet been united in the various governmental experiments of that country. This plan was first given to the public some years after in one of the author's volumes of Travels. His next novel was the Water Witch, a sea tale, in which he has relied for a portion of its interest on the supernatural. Note to revised edition of the Prairie. He was one of the most active leaders in the demonstrations of welcome to La Fayette on his visit to the United States in 1824-Dr. Francis's Reminiscences of Cooper. He, about the same time, undertook the defence of his country from a charge made in the Rérue Britannique, that the government of the United States was one of the most expensive, and entailed as heavy a burden of taxation on those under its sway, as any in the world. He met this charge by a letter, which was translated into French, and published with a similar production by General Bertrand, whose long residence in America had rendered him familiar with the subject. These letters, prepared and published at the suggestion of La Fayette, were in turn responded to, and the original slanders reiterated. Cooper, in reply, published a series of letters in the National, a leading daily paper of Paris, the last of which appeared May 2, 1832. In these he triumphantly established his position. It was during this discussion that he published The Bravo, which embodied to some extent the points at issue in the controversy. In the words of Bryant, "his object was to show how institutions, professedly created to prevent violence and wrong, become, when perverted from their natural destination, the instruments of injustice, and how, in every system which makes power the exclusive property of the strong, the weak are sure to be oppressed." The scene of this story is laid in Venice, a new field for his descriptive powers, to which he brings the same vigor and freshness which had characterized his scenes of forest life. The story is dramatic, the characters well contrasted, and in one, the daughter of the jailor, he presented one of the most perfect of his feinale delineations. The Bravo was followed in 1832 by The Heidenmauer, and in 1833 by The Headsman of Berne, the scenes and incidents of both of which, as their titles suggest, were drawn from European history, their political purpose being similar to that of the Bravo. Cooper's controversies in Europe attracted much attention at home, where his course found opponents as well as partisans; and many who, expressing no opinion on the points at issue, were disposed to regard him as having provoked a controversy for the gratification of his taste for discussion. It was during this divided state of public opinion that the novelist returned home in 1833. His first publication after his arrival was A Letter to my Countrymen, in which he gave a history of his controversy with a portion of the foreign press, and complained of the course pursued by that of his own country in relation thereto. Passing from this personal topic he censured the general deference to foreign criticism prevalent in the country, and entered with warmth into the discussion of various topics of the party politics of Monikins, a political satire, and The American the day. He followed up this production by The Democrat. "Had a suitable compound offered," he says in the preface to the latter, "the title of this book would have been something like 'AntiCant,' for such a term expresses the intention of the writer better, perhaps, than the one he has actually chosen. The work is written more in the spirit of censure than of praise, for its aim is correction; and virtues bring their own reward, while errors are dangerous.' This little volume embraces almost the entire range of topics connected with American government and society. It is a vigorous presentation of the author's opinions, and its spirit and independence may be best appreciated by the exhibition of one of its briefest but not least pungent sections. "THEY SAY." "They say," is the monarch of this country, in a social sense. No one asks "who says it," so long as it is believed that "they say it." Designing men endeavor to persuade the publick, that already "they say," what these designing men wish to be said, and the publick is only too much disposed blindly to join in the cry of "they say." This is another consequence of the habit of deferring to the control of the publick, over matters in which the publick has no right to interfere. Every well meaning man, before he yields his faculties and intelligence to this sort of dictation, should first ask himself “who" is "they," and on what authority "they say" utters its mandates. These works, of course, furnished fruitful matter of comment to some of the newspaper editors of the day, who forgot good manners, and violently assailed the author's peculiarities. These asperities were heightened after the appearance of the novels of Homeward Bound and Home as Found, in 1838. In these the author introduced, with his usual force, and more than his usual humor, a portraiture of a newspaper editor. The newspapers, taking this humorous picture of the vices of a portion of their class as a slander on the entire body, retorted by nicknaming the author from a gentleman who forms one of the favored characters of these fictions, "the mild and gentlemanly Mr. Effingham." The author now commenced his celebrated libel suits against the Commercial Advertiser and other influential journals. He followed up a tedious and vexatious litigation with his custo!nary resolution and perseverance, bringing suit after suit, until the annoyance of which he complained was terminated. He thus sums up the issue of the affair in a sentence of a letter quoted by Mr. Bryant: "I have beaten every man I have sued who has not retracted his libels." The accuracy of his Naval History of the United States, published in 1839 in two octavo volumes, was one of the matters which entered into this controversy, and in a suit brought on this issue Cooper appeared and defended in person his account of the Battle of Lake Erie with great ability. A lawyer, who was an auditor of its closing sentences, remarked to Mr. Bryant, who also characterizes its opening as "clear, skilful, and persuasive," "I have heard nothing like it since the days of Emmet." The publication of the Naval History during this stormy period of the author's career, shows that controversy was far from occupying his entire attention. This work, as was to be expected from the author's mastery of the subject in another field of literature, was full of spirit. Its accuracy has been generally admitted, save on a few points, which still remain matter of discussion. It was the first attempt to fill an important and glorious portion of the record of the national progress, and still remains the chief authority on the subject, and from the finish and vigor of its battle-pieces, an American classic. During an earlier part of this same period, in 1836, Cooper issued his Sketches of Switzerland in four volumes, and in 1837 and 1838 his Gleanings in Europe, France, and Italy, each occupying two duodecimo volumes. The series forms a pleasant record of his wanderings, of the distinguished men whose friendship he enjoyed, and of the public events which he witnessed, and in some instances was himself participant, and contains ingenious criticism on the social and political characteristics of the several countries. In 1840, while still in the midst of his libel suits, as if to re-assert his literary claims as well as personal rights, he returned to his old and strong field of literary exertion by the publication of The Pathfinder, a tale which introduces us again to the scenes, and many of the personages of The Last of the Mohicans. It was foliowedthe novel of Mercedes of Castile intervening-in 1841, by The Deerslayer. The scene of this fiction is laid on the Otsego lake and its vicinity in the middle of the last century. It abounds in fine descriptions of the scenery of the region, then in its primeval wildness, and succeeds admirably in making the reader at home in the life of the pioneer. Many of the incidents of the tale take place in the ark or floating habitation of Tom Hutter, the solitary white denizen of the region, who has constructed and adopted this floating fortress as a precaution against the Indians. His family consists of two daughters, Judith and Hetty, in whose characters the author has contrasted great mental vigor combined with lax moral principle, to enfeebled intellect strengthened by unswerving rectitude. These sisters are among the most successful of the author's female portraits. Deerslayer's course in the fiction is intended still further to enforce the same great truth of the strength afforded by a simple straightforward integrity. It is a noble picture of true manliness. Deerslayer appears in this novel in early youth, and the work is, therefore, now that the Leather-stocking series is completed, to be regarded as that in which he commences his career. This character will always interest the world, both from its essential ingredients, and the novel circumstances in which it exhibits itself. It is the author's ideal of a chivalresque manhood, of the grace which is the natural flower of purity and virtue; not the stoic, but the Christian of the woods, the man of honorable act and sentiment, of courage and truth. Leather-stocking stands half way between savage and civilized life: he has the freshness of nature and the first fruits of Christianity, the seed dropped into the vigorous soil. These are the elements of one of the most original characters in fiction, in whom Cooper has transplanted all the chivalry ever feigned or practised in the middle ages, to the rivers, woods, and forests of the unbroken New World. Deerslayer, in point of style, is one of Cooper's purest compositions. There are passages of Saxon in the dialogues and speeches which would do honor to the most admired pages of the romantic old Chroniclers. The language is as noble as the thought. It is a singular proof of the extent to which the newspaper quarrels to which we have al luded had interfered with Cooper's position as a literary man, that the Pathfinder and the Deerslayer, two of the very best of his productions, attracted but little attention on their first appearance, for which we have the author's authority in his prefaces to the revised editions. In 1842 Cooper issued two sea novels, The Two Admirals, and Wing and Wing, both spirited tales of naval conflict, in which the ships share the vitality in the reader's imagination of the "little Ariel" of the Pilot. Wyandotte; or, the Hutted Knoll, appeared in 1843. In this tale Cooper again returns to the Otsego. It narrates the settlement of an English family in the vicinity of the lake about the commencement of the Revolution, and abounds in quiet scenes of sylvan beauty, and incidents of a calmer character than are usual in the author's fictions. The Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief, a short tale, originally published from month to month in Graham's Magazine, followed. Ned Myers, a more characteristic production, appeared about the same time. In this the author gives the veritable adventures of an old shipmate, taken down from his own lips. It abounds in striking scenes, which rival in intensity those of his professed fictions. Cooper's novels follo ved in rapid succession during the latter period of his life. With his customary spirit he adapted himself to the publishing fashion introducea by the system of cheap reprints, and brought out his new works in twenty-five cent volumes. Afloat and Ashore, and Miles Wallingford, its sequel, also tales of the sea, followed. In 1844 the author published A Review of the Mackenzie Case, a severe comment on the course of the commander of the Somers. His next novel, Satanstoe, published in 1845, was the first of a series avowedly written to denounce the anti-rent doctrines which then at tracted much public notice. The scene of Satanstoe is laid in the district in which the outrages connected with this question took place, and the time of the action carries us back to the middle of the last century, and the early settlement of the region. In the second of the series, The Chain Bearer, we have the career of the Littlepage family carried down to the second generation at the close of the Revolution. In the third and concluding portion, The Redskins; or, Indian and Ingin, we come close upon the present day. The style of these fictions is energetic, but they fall short of his earlier productions in the delineation of character and interest. The treatment of the questions of law involved in the progress of the argument has been pronounced masterly by a competent authority.* In 1846 Cooper published Lires of Distinguished American Naval Officers, a series of biographical sketches written for Graham's Magazine. The Crater; or, Vulcan's Peak, followed in 1847. The scene of this story is on the shores of the Pacific. It has little to do with real life, the hero being wrecked on a reef, which, by supernatural machinery, is peopled with an Bryant's Liscourse, p. 66. Utopian community, giving the author an opportunity to exhibit his views of government. Oak Openings; or, the Bee Hunter, a story of woodland life, appeared in the same year. Jack Tier; or, the Florida Reef, was published in 1848, from the pages of Graham's Magazine; a story of the sea, resembling in its points of interest the Water-Witch. The last of the long series of these ocean narratives, The Sea Lions; or, the Lost Sealers, opens on the coast of Suffolk county, Long Island, and transports us to the Antarctic Ocean, in whose "thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice" the author finds ample scope for his descriptive powers. The two ships, the "Sea Lions," pass the winter locked in the ice, and their crews endure the usual mishaps and perils of the region, from which they escape in the following summer. Cooper's last novel appeared in 1850. It was entitled The Ways of the Hour, and designed to exhibit the evils in the author's opinion of trial by jury. Soon after the publication of this work, Cooper, whose personal appearance excited universal remark, from the robust strength and health it exhibited, was attacked by disease. This, while it wasted his frame, did not diminish his energy. He had in press an historical work on The Towns of Manhattan, and in contemplation a sixth Leather-stocking tale, when his disease, gaining strength, developed into a dropsy, which closed his life at his country estate at Cooperstown, September 14, 1851, on the eve of his sixtysecond birthday. A public meeting was held in honor of his memory in the city of New York, and as preliminary to the attempt to raise a fund for a monument for the same purpose, at Metropolitan Hall, Feb. 24, 1852. Daniel Webster presided, and made his last address to a New York assemblage. A discourse was read by Wm. C. Bryant, to which we have been largely indebted in the preparation of the present sketch. |