press of Great Britain, which are still read and admired. Barry Cornwall,
then a young suitor for fame, published in the same year his _Marcia
Colonna_; Byron, in the full strength and fertility of his genius, gave
the readers of English his tragedy of _Marino Faliero_, and was in the
midst of his spirited controversy with Bowles concerning the poetry of
Pope. The _Spy_ had to sustain a comparison with Scott's _Antiquary_,
published simultaneously with it, and with Lockhart's _Valerius_, which
seems to me one of the most remarkable works of fiction ever composed.

In 1823, and in his thirty-fourth year, Cooper brought out his novel of
the _Pioneers_, the scene of which was laid on the borders of his: own
beautiful lake. In a recent survey of Mr; Cooper's works, by one of his
admirers, it is intimated that the reputation of this work may have been,
in some degree factitious. I cannot think so; I cannot see how such a work
could fail of becoming, sooner or later, a favorite. It was several years
after its first appearance that I read the _Pioneers_, and I read it with
a delighted astonishment. Here, said I to myself, is the poet of rural
life in this country--our Hesiod, our Theocritus, except that he writes
without the restraint of numbers, and is a greater poet than they. In the
_Pioneers_, as in a moving picture, are made to pass before us the hardy
occupations and spirited, amusements of a prosperous settlement, in, a
fertile region, encompassed for leagues around with the primeval
wilderness of woods. The seasons in their different aspects, bringing with
them, their different employments; forests falling before the axe; the
cheerful population, with the first mild; day of spring, engaged in the
sugar orchards; the chase of the deer through the deep woods, and into the
lake; turkey-shooting, during the Christmas holidays, in which the Indian
marksman vied for the prize of skill with the white man; swift sleigh
rides under the bright winter sun, and, perilous encounters with wild
animals in the forests; these, and other scenes of rural life, drawn, as