JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.


'.... Whose trained eye was keen,
As eagle of the wilderness, to scan
His path by mountain, lake, or deep ravine,
Or ken far friendly huts on good savannas green.'
--CAMPBELL: _Gertrude of Wyoming_.

On the 14th of last September, America lost the greatest of
her novelists in the person of James Fenimore Cooper. He was born on the
15th of that month, 1789; so that, had he lived but a few hours longer,
he would have completed his sixty-second year. At the time of his birth,
his father, Judge Cooper, resided at Burlington, New Jersey, where the
future _littérateur_ commenced his education, and in so doing acquired a
decided reputation for talent, which was not tarnished during subsequent
years of tutelage at Newhaven and Yale College. At sixteen he exchanged
the study of ancient literature and the repose of academic life for the
bustling career of a 'middy' in the American navy; continuing for some
half-dozen years his connection with those ocean scenes which he then
learned to love so well and to describe so vividly. His retirement into
private life took place in 1811, soon after which he married Miss de
Lancey (whose brother is known to many as one of the New York bishops),
and settled at Cooper's Town, his patrimonial estate. Ten years elapsed
before his _début_ as an author. In 1821 he presented the public with a
novel bearing the perhaps apposite title of _Precaution_--apposite, if
the two _lustra_ thus elapsed were passed in preparation for that début,
and as being after all anonymously published. The subject was one with
which Cooper never shewed himself conversant--namely, the household life
of England. Like his latest works, _Precaution_ was a failure, and gave