The month of December, 1830, which saw the publication of "The Water Witch," closed the first and far the most fortunate decade of Cooper's literary life. In the decade which followed began that career of controversy which lasted, with little intermission, until his death. By it his reputation and his fortunes were profoundly affected. It worked a complete revolution both in the sentiments with which he regarded others, and in the sentiments with which others regarded him. The most intense lover of his country, he became the most unpopular man of letters to whom it has ever given birth. For years a storm of abuse fell upon him, which for violence, for virulence, and even for malignity, surpassed anything in the history of American literature, if not in the history of literature itself. Nor did the effect of this disappear with his life. The misrepresentations and calumnies, which were then set in motion, have not ceased to operate even at this day. Full as marked, still, was the influence which the controversies, in which he was engaged, had upon his literary reputation. A direct result of them at the time was not only to impair the estimation in which his previous writings had been held, but to cause the later productions of his pen to be treated with systematic injustice. Both in England and America the effect of this hostile criticism has not yet died away.

On the other hand, it was no one-sided contest that took place. If Cooper was attacked, he, in turn, did his part in attacking. No man has ever criticised his own country more unsparingly, and in some instances more unjustly, than did he, who, in foreign lands, had been its stoutest and most pronounced defender. Nor, in the controversies that followed his return from Europe, did one side conduct itself with perfect righteousness, and the other with deliberate villainy. Had the parties but seen fit to act in this manner, the duties of a biographer would have been sensibly lightened. A fair and dispassionate account of the circumstances that led to the unpopularity which clouded, though it could hardly be said to darken, Cooper's later life, demands a full and careful examination of many facts which, in some instances, seem to have no relation to the subject. Especially is a knowledge of the European estimate of America during the period that the novelist resided abroad a matter of first importance. But even of as great importance is a knowledge of certain traits of his character and of certain sentiments which he strongly felt, and of certain beliefs which he earnestly held. To bring out these points clearly, it is necessary for a while to arrest the progress of the narrative.

It is to be remarked at the outset that the first impression which Cooper made upon strangers was rarely in his favor. To this we have the concurrent testimony of those who knew him slightly, and of those who knew him well. It was due to a variety of causes. He had infinite pride, and there was in his manner a self-assertion that often bordered, or seemed to border, upon arrogance. His earnestness, moreover, was often mistaken for brusqueness and violence; for he was, in some measure, of that class of men who appear to be excited when they are only interested. The result was that at first he was apt to repel rather than attract. Without referring to other evidence, we need here only to quote the guarded statement of one of his warmest friends in describing the beginning of their acquaintance. "I remember," says Bryant, "being somewhat startled, coming, as I did, from the seclusion of a country life, with a certain emphatic frankness in his manner which, however, I came at last to like and to admire." But besides this he had other characteristics which, to the majority of men, could not be agreeable. Thoroughly grounded in his own convictions, positive and uncompromising in the expression of them, he had no patience with those--and the number is far from being a small one--who embrace their views loosely, hold them halfheartedly, or defend them ignorantly. The opinions of such he was not content, like most men of ability, with quietly and unobtrusively despising. The contempt he felt he did not pay sufficient deference to human nature to hide. It was inevitable that the self-love of many should be offended by the arbitrariness and imperiousness with which he overrode their opinions, and still more by the unequivocal disdain manifested for them. It must be conceded, also, that to those for whom he felt indifference or dislike, he had in no slight degree that capacity of making himself disagreeable which reaches, and then only in rare instances, the ripened perfection of offensiveness in him who has breathed from earliest youth the social air of England. These were traits that were sure to make him enemies in private life. In public life, moreover, the ardor of his temperament was such as to hurry him into controversy; and the number of those hostile to him on personal grounds, was always liable to receive accessions from men who had never seen him face to face. No gage of battle could be thrown down which he did not stand ready to take up. Opposition only inflamed him; it never daunted him. He had not the slightest particle of that prudence which teaches a man to keep out of contests in which he can gain no advantage, or in which success will be only a little less disastrous than defeat. It hardly needs to be said that a politic line of conduct is usually the very last which a person of such a temperament follows. But when to all these characteristics is added a peculiar sensitiveness to criticism, it is evident that if proper opportunities are offered, personal unpopularity will be certain to result from the ample materials existing for its development.

Against this view of his character, it is fair to add here that he had many qualities which would tend to bring about an entirely opposite result. He was more than ordinarily generous; and gave with a liberality that went at times beyond what most men would look upon as prudence. He was prompt to relieve merit that stood in need of help. Many cases of this kind there are unpublished and unknown out of a very small circle; for Cooper was not one to let his left hand know what his right hand was doing. One fact, however, has been so often mentioned, that it is violating no sanctity of private life to repeat it here. He was the first to discover the excellence of Greenough and to make that sculptor known to his countrymen. "Fenimore Cooper saved me from despair," wrote the latter in 1833, "after my second return to Italy. He employed me as I wished to be employed; and has up to this moment been a father to me in kindness." To this generosity, it is to be added that his sense of personal honor was of the loftiest kind. It was sometimes, indeed, carried to an extreme almost Quixotic; so that men morally fat-witted could not even comprehend his principles of action, and men who contented themselves with conventional morality resented his assertion of them as a reflection upon themselves. His loyalty to those who had become dear to him was, moreover, just as conspicuous as his loyalty to what he deemed right. It withstood every chance of change, every accident of time and circumstance, and only gave way on absolute proof of unworthiness. Intimate acquaintance was sure to bring to Cooper respect, admiration, and finally affection. Few men have stood better than he that final test of excellence which rests upon the fact that those who knew him best loved him most. Yet even these were often forced to admit, that it was necessary to know him well to appreciate how generous, how true, and how lofty-minded he was.

Besides these traits of character, it is important to understand some of Cooper's political and social opinions. He was an aristocrat in feeling, and a democrat by conviction. To some this seems a combination so unnatural that they find it hard to comprehend it. That a man whose tastes and sympathies and station connect him with the highest class, and to whom contact with the uneducated and unrefined brings with it a sense of personal discomfort and often of disgust, should avow his belief in the political rights of those socially inferior, should be unwilling to deny them privileges which he claims for himself, is something so appalling to many that their minds strive vainly to grasp it. But this feeling was so thoroughly wrought into Cooper's nature that he almost disliked those of his countrymen whom he found not to share in it. "I confess," he wrote at the time when he was generally denounced as an aristocrat, "that I now feel mortified and grieved when I meet with an American gentleman who professes anything but liberal opinions as respects the rights of his fellow-creatures." He went on to explain that by liberal opinions he meant "the generous, manly determination to let all enjoy equal political rights, and to bring those to whom authority is necessarily confided under the control of the community they serve." He despised the cant that the people were their own worst enemies. So far from it, he believed in widening the foundations of society by making representation as real as possible, and thereby giving to every interest in the state its fair measure of power; for no government, in his eyes, could ever be just or pure in which the governors have interests distinct from those of the governed. These opinions he put sometimes in an extreme form. "I have never yet been in a country," he said, "in which what are called the lower orders have not clearer and sounder views than their betters, of the great principles which ought to predominate in the control of human affairs." At the same time his belief in democracy was not in the least one of unmixed admiration. He was far from looking upon it as a perfect form of government. It was only the one that, taking all things into consideration, was attended with fewer evils and greater advantages than any other. It had faults and dangers peculiar to itself. His liberal opinions, he took frequent care to say, had nothing in common with the devices of demagogues who teach the doctrine, that the voice of the people is the voice of God; that the aggregation of fallible parts, acting, too, with diminished responsibilities, forms an infallible whole.

Along with this clear understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of democracy there was mingled, however, a weakness of feeling on the subject of position, which occasionally degenerated into an almost ridiculous pettiness. This was especially true of his later life. His utterances were sometimes so apparently contradictory, however, that it is hard to tell whether justice has been done to his real meaning on account of the difficulty of ascertaining what his real meaning was. But he spoke often of "the gentry of America," as if there were or could be here a class of gentlemen outside and independent of those engaged in professions or occupations. He seemed at times to attach that supreme importance to descent which we are usually accustomed to see exhibited in this country only by those who have little or nothing else to boast of. His contempt of trade and of those employed in it had frequently about its expression a spice of affectation. Moreover, he subjected himself to much misrepresentation and ill-will by the manner in which he lectured his countrymen on the distinctions that must prevail in society. There are certain things which are everywhere recognized and quietly accepted: they only become offensive when proclaimed. A man may unhesitatingly acquiesce in his inferiority, socially, to one who is politically only his equal; but he will very naturally resent a reference, by the latter, to the fact of his social inferiority. A good deal of Cooper's later writings was deformed by solemn commonplaces on the inevitable necessity of the existence of class distinctions. This drew upon him the condemnation of many who did not look upon the expression of such views as an offense against truth, but as an offense against good manners. To correct the folly of fools was itself folly; and wise men, no matter what their station in life, did not thank him for the instruction, the very giving of which implied an insult to their intelligence. His remarks on the subject were never heeded, if indeed they were ever read, by those for whom they were specially designed. But to his enemies they furnished ample opportunities for misrepresentation and abuse.

But any account of Cooper would be of slight value that failed to take notice of his love of country. No other man of letters has there been in America, or perhaps in any other land, to whom this has been a passion so absorbing. It entered into the very deepest feelings of his heart. Even in the storm of calumny, which fell upon him in his later years, if the flame of his patriotism seemed at times to die away, any little circumstance was sure to revive it at once. No proclaimer of "manifest destiny" ever had more faith than he in the imperial greatness and grandeur to which the republic was to attain. All that in vulgar minds took the shape of braggart boasting, was in his idealized and glorified by his lofty conception of the majestic part which his country was to play in deciding the destinies of mankind. In spite of short-comings he deplored, of perils that he feared, firm in his heart was the conviction that here was to be the home of the great new race that was to rule the world. Other lands might look to the future with hope or doubt; his own was as sure of it as if it lay already in its grasp. This was a confidence that survived all changes, and despised all forebodings. The question of slavery certainly disturbed him, but it did not shake his trust. The prophecies of the dissolution of the Union, current in Europe, he laughed to scorn. Even in the days of nullification his faith never wavered one jot. To no one, more justly than to him, could perpetual thanks have been voted, because he never despaired of the republic.

Cooper's lofty views of his country he soon found were essentially different from those entertained abroad. The knowledge of America even now possessed in Europe is not burdensomely great. But in 1830 its ignorance was prodigious; and the nearest approach to interest was usually the result of something of that same vague fear which haunted the citizens of the Roman Empire at the possible perils to civilization that might lie hid in the boundless depths of the German forests. On the Continent the ignorance was greater than it was in England, and Cooper had plenty of opportunities of witnessing the exhibition of it. In the case of the common people he was amused by it. That the whites who had emigrated to America had not yet become entirely black; that it was reasonable to expect that time, while it could not restore their original hue to these deteriorated Europeans tanned to ebony, might in the revolution of the suns elevate them to a fair degree of civilization; these, and similar sage opinions, did not disturb him when uttered by the philosophers of the lower classes. Yet their ignorance, great as it was, he found not to surpass materially that of men who ought to have known better, so long as they pretended to know at all. That the colonies had been settled by convicts, was a common impression among the best educated. While residing in Paris Cooper had the gratification of having his country quoted in the French Chamber of Deputies as an example of the possibility of forming respectable communities by the transportation of criminals. Even men who sympathized with republican institutions, he informs us, did not think of denying the fact; they denied merely the inference. The brilliant publicist, Paul Courier, had asserted it would be as unjust to reproach the modern Romans with being descendants of ravishers and robbers, as it would be to reproach the Americans with being descendants of convicts. All could not be expected, however, to be so liberal as this constitutional reformer. The gross vices which in foreign opinion distinguished the inhabitants of the United States, were held to be the natural consequences of their settlement by felons. Cooper subsequently took care to furnish the sons of the Puritans with all needful information as to the light in which their fathers were viewed in Europe. At the time, however, it was far different. Keenly sensitive to his country's honor, and knowing the morals of his countrymen to be far higher than those of the men of any other land, derogatory statements of this kind were galling in the extreme.

But it was the English opinion that Cooper resented most bitterly. This was partly because he believed from the community of origin and speech it ought to be better informed, and partly because he looked upon it as responsible for many of the absurd and erroneous impressions that prevailed in the rest of Europe. His feelings were rendered still keener by the direct contact with English prejudice which he had personally during his residence abroad. The attitude of the Continent towards America was that of supreme ignorance and indifference. But there was at the time something besides that in the attitude of England, so far certainly as it was represented by its periodical literature. In the most favorable cases it was supercilious and patronizing, an attitude which never permits the nation criticising to understand the nation criticised. There was never any effort to penetrate into the real nature of the social and political movements that were taking place on this side of the water. Men were contented with the examination of mere external phenomena, which, whether good or bad in themselves, belonged to a period of growth and were certain to pass away. Not the slightest sympathy existed with the feelings and aspirations of a people closely allied in blood and speech, and the lack of desire involved the lack of ability to enter into the spirit of their institutions. There was no idea that there could be other types of character than those found on British soil, or any room or reason for the play of other social and political forces than were at work in British communities.

At the time, however, that Cooper took up his residence in Europe there was more than supercilious indifference in the character of English criticism. There was steady misrepresentation and abuse, due in a few cases to design, in more to ignorance, in most to that disposition on the part of all men to believe readily what they wish ardently. It made little difference whether the writer were Whig or Tory. If anything the open dislike of the latter was preferable to the patronizing regard of the former. In 1804 the poet Moore visited America. He wrote home a number of poetical epistles, in which he told his friends that he had found us old in our youth and blasted in our prime. The demon gold was running loose; everything and everybody was corrupt; truth, conscience, and virtue were regularly made matters of barter and sale. A succession of English travelers repeated from year to year the same dismal story, and their statements were caught up and paraded and dwelt upon in the English periodical press. In "The Quarterly Review," in particular, our condition was constantly held up as an awful example of the results of democratic institutions and universal suffrage. Certain facts and predictions had been repeated so often that they came to be accepted and believed by all. We spoke a dialect of the English tongue; our manners were bad, if we could be said to have any at all; loyalty we could know nothing about, because we had no king; religion we were entirely devoid of, because there was no established church; the federation was steadily tending towards monarchy; the wealthy were longing to be nobles; and the Union could not last above a quarter of a century. Worse than all, intrigue and bribery were sapping the national life; or to use a still favorite phrase of the newspapers, though the repetition of a hundred years has now made it somewhat stale, corruption was preying upon the vitals of the republic.

There is not the slightest exaggeration in these statements. Their truth any one familiar with the periodical literature of that period will least of all doubt. There was a perfect agreement between those who visited us and described us and those who drew their description from their imaginations. Nothing distinguished the English traveler or the English reviewer so much as his piety, and his profound conviction that religion could not exist where it was not carefully watched over by an established church. Besides this inevitable moral destitution, we were irreclaimably given over to vulgarity. Manners there could not be in a land abandoned to an unbridled democracy. In the most praiseworthy instances even, men lacked that repose, that fine tact, which were found universally in the higher orders in the mother country. The defect was ineradicable, according to most; for it had its baleful origin in popular institutions themselves. In justice it must be added that there were some who, in consequence of the American passion for traveling, entertained a mild hope that in time this rudeness would wear away, and this total ignorance of good breeding would be enlightened by the polish and refinement that would be picked up from the quantity to be found scattered about foreign courts. The published correspondence of that period is delicious in its frankness. The Englishman, writing to his American friend, never descends from his lofty position of censor both of great and petty morals. The inferiority of manners in this country is a point insisted upon by the former with an assiduity and assurance that are sufficient of themselves to make clear how high was the breeding to which he himself had attained. It makes little difference who write the letters. They all express the same sentiments. They all offer advice as to the best method America can take to retrieve the good opinion of Europe which it has lost. They are careful to say that they entertain the kindest of feelings to the United States; that they neglect no occasion of doing justice to the good and wise that had found there a home. Unfortunately these are few in number; and with a lofty sense of justice they never fail to express disapprobation in strong terms of the vast amount to be condemned in a land which had fallen under the sway of a reckless democracy and a godless church. One English gentleman in the British military service, after being some time in this country, writes, after his return, to an American friend, and thus cheerfully records his impressions. "The frightful effects produced by an unrestrained democracy," he says, "the demoralizing effects produced by universal suffrage never appeared to me so odious as they do now by contrast with the good breeding, the order and mutual support which all give to each other in this country, from the highest to the lowest." This letter belongs to the year 1839, and it only continues a line of remark common for the half-century previous. Everything that came from America, if praised at all, was praised with a qualification. Not a compliment could be uttered of an individual without an implied disparagement of the land that gave him birth. The record of every man who was well received in English society will bear out this assertion. Scott wrote to Southey in 1819, that Ticknor was "a wondrous fellow for romantic lore and antiquarian research, considering his country." Even words of genuine affection were often accompanied with an impertinence which has a delightfulness of its own from the utter unconsciousness on the part of the writer or speaker of having said anything out of the way. They were compliments of the kind which intimated that the person addressed was a sort of redeeming feature in a wild waste of desert. "You have taught us," writes in 1840 Mrs. Basil Montagu to Charles Sumner, "to think much more highly of your country--from whom we have hitherto seen no such men."

There is nothing to be gained in raking over at this day the ashes of dead controversies and revilings. Americans no longer read the writings of the kind described, and Englishmen have largely forgotten that they were ever written. The new commentators on our habits and customs have taken up a new line of remark, and the new prophets of woe foresee an entirely new class of calamities. But it has been necessary to revive here the memory of the old charges and forebodings, in order to show the state of feeling that would be developed by them in a man of a peculiarly sensitive and proud nature, such as was the subject of this biography. Rubbish as they may seem now, they were to the men of that time a grievous sore. Whatever may have been Cooper's feelings previously, it was not until after he had resided for a while in Europe that any hostility towards England is seen in his works. But there it soon began to manifest itself, though at first rather in the way of defense than attack. As time went on it increased rather than diminished. It largely affected his own fortunes by the personal hostility it provoked in return. To some extent, without doubt, his oft-repeated declaration was true, that in the dependence then existing here upon foreign opinion, every American author held his reputation at the mercy of the British reviewer. It would be unjust to say that it seemed at one period almost as if Cooper had sworn towards England undying hate. But it is certainly a fact that he gave utterance to his inmost feelings when he described it as a country that cast a chill over his affections, a country that all men respected but that few men loved. Yet he had been brought up in the school of the Federalist party, in which admiration for the literature, policy, and morals of the motherland was taught as a duty; in which every door was thrown open to visitors from England as an act of hospitality due to kinsmen separated merely by the accident of position. He himself tells us how, an ardent boy of seventeen, he leaped for the first time upon the soil of Great Britain, feeling for it a love almost as devoted as that which he bore the land of his birth, and looking upon every native of it in the light of a brother. It did not take him long to find out that the fancied tie of kinship was not recognized, that it was even despised; and that if he made friends, it must be in spite of his country, and not because of it. His connection with the navy had also led him to be keenly sensitive to the injustice and indignities connected with the impressment of seamen. In his first voyage in a merchant ship he had seen two native Americans taken from the vessel and forced into the British service. His own captain even had on one occasion been seized, though speedily liberated. There had also been an attempt to press a Swede belonging to the crew, on the ground that his country and England were in alliance, and the latter had therefore a right to his help. These were not the acts to inspire devotion towards the people who committed or who authorized them. The keen resentment Cooper felt for the wrongs then perpetrated upon the American marine he afterward expressed in his novels of "Wing-and-Wing" and "Miles Wallingford." He never forgot those early experiences. When he came to reside in Europe he was as little disposed to forgive the depreciation of his country which he imputed, whether justly or unjustly, to English influence. Distrust became dislike, and dislike deepened into hostility.

There is little doubt that with a man of Cooper's nature the revulsion from his original feelings would tend to swing him to the opposite extreme; that, as a consequence of that, he would often fancy insult where none was intended, and impute to design conduct that was the result of chance or even of personal timidity. But making full allowance for this inevitable source of error, there was plenty of reason furnished for offense to a man whose personal pride was equal to that of the whole British aristocracy, and whose pride in his country exceeded even his personal pride. The ignorant criticism which amused most Americans was apt to make him indignant. No compliment, in particular, could be paid with safety to him individually at the expense of his country. This was a practice, however, which the Englishmen of that day seemed to regard as the consummate crown of adulation. Depreciation of America of any sort he resented at once. If conversation touched upon matters discreditable to the United States--which was far from being an uncommon topic--it was very much his practice, instead of listening to it patiently, to bring up matters discreditable to Great Britain. There was unquestionably ample material on both sides with which each could blacken the other. But while this tended to make the conversation less monotonous, it likewise tended to make the converser less popular. Cooper lost early by his bearing in English society much of the favor which he had won from his writings. To this we have positive evidence. It is specifically mentioned in the sketch of his life, which along with his portrait appeared in 1831 in Colburn's "New Monthly Magazine." The article went on, after mentioning this fact, to pay a tribute to his somewhat aggressive patriotism. "Yet he seems," it said, "to claim little consideration on the score of intellectual greatness; he is evidently prouder of his birth than of his genius; and looks, speaks, and walks as if he exulted more in being recognized as an American citizen than as the author of 'The Pilot' and 'The Prairie.'"

To a man whose heart was thus full of the future glories of the republic, the indifference and neglect with which it was regarded could not but be galling. Still this was nothing to the positive contempt which often manifested itself in social slights that could be felt but could not well be resented. This was especially noticeable in the case of the legations, the conduct of which was largely under the control of the home government. The English policy was here in marked contrast to that of Russia, which, even at that early day, cultivated almost ostentatiously friendship with America. Between the legations of these two countries there was always the best of understandings. The direct contrary often prevailed between the ministers of Great Britain and of the United States. The influence of the former was frequently thought to be exerted to the social injury of the latter. Whether true or false, this was generally believed. Cooper certainly credited it and looked forward to the time when the whole attitude of England would be altered. We were then less than twelve millions in population; but the day would come when we should be fifty millions. The existing state of things would then be changed. You and I may not live to see it, he wrote substantially to his friends, but our sons and grandsons will. They may not like us any better, but they will take care to hide their feelings. Strong resentment sometimes drove him into taking up positions he would not in his cooler moments have maintained. "As one citizen of the republic," he wrote, "however insignificant, I have no notion of being blackguarded and vituperated half a century and then cajoled into forgetfulness at the suggestion of fear and expediency, as circumstances render our good-will of importance." Not one of these slights and insults would he have the fifty millions forget. He did not bear in mind that fifty millions could not afford to remember. It was like asking the man of middle life to revenge upon the sons the indignities which the boy had received from the fathers.

Cooper's residence in England was only for a few months during the first half of the year 1828. With his feelings towards that country and with the feeling entertained in it toward his own, nothing could have made his stay highly pleasant. But it is one of the numerous minor falsehoods that came to be connected with his life, that it was unpleasant. On the contrary, his company was sought by many of the most distinguished men, though in accordance with his usual custom he carried no letters of introduction. At a later period he said that in no country had he been personally so well treated as in England; he was as strongly convinced as his worst enemy, that as an author he had been extolled there beyond his merits; nor had he failed to receive quite as much substantial remuneration as he could properly lay claim to. But the social atmosphere there prevailing was not the atmosphere he loved. The poet Moore relates in his diary a story told him by Sydney Smith of the "touchiness" of "the Republican"--so the American novelist is styled--as evinced by the indignation of the latter at the conduct of Lord Nugent. This nobleman, it appears, invited Cooper to take a walk with him to a certain street. Arriving there he unceremoniously entered the house of a friend and left his companion to make his way back alone. Cooper's resentment of the treatment may have been unwisely shown; for though often termed an aristocrat, he never exhibited in the slightest degree that reticence which is or is supposed to be the peculiar characteristic of aristocracy. But few would now be found to deny that his indignation was both natural and just, and that the act of Lord Nugent was the act of a boor and not of a gentleman. It was certainly unreasonable to expect that a society which could rejoice in this method of rebuking republican pretension could itself be agreeable to a republican. Cooper could not but be offended by the prejudices he found existing against his country and the dislike usually felt and sometimes expressed for it. The only man he met whom he thought well informed about America was Sir James Mackintosh. The ignorance of some of his friends was so great that even to him it caused amusement rather than anger. Many readers will have heard of the practice of "gouging," with which, according to the veracious English traveler of early days, the native American gave the charm of diversity and diversion to a life whose serious thoughts were wholly absorbed in the acquisition of pelf. Some will remember the definition given of it in Grose's "Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:" "to squeeze out a man's eye with the thumb; a cruel practice used by the Bostonians in America." A curious illustration of the belief in this myth occurred to Cooper. One of his friends in England was an amiable and pleasant man of letters, named William Sotheby, little heard of in these days; and even in his own days he had to endure the double degradation of being called a small poet by the small poets themselves. He was at this time an old gentleman of over seventy, and was preparing to make a creditable close to his career by performing the task, which seems to assume the shape of a duty to every literary Englishman of leisure, of translating the Iliad and the Odyssey. Not unnaturally he was more familiar with the way the wrath of Achilles manifested itself than with the shape taken by the wrath of the men of his race beyond the sea. On one occasion he condoled with Cooper because of the quarrelsomeness and fighting prevalent in America, making during this expression of his sympathy an obvious allusion to gouging. It was useless to attempt setting him right. His interest in ancient fiction had not been so absorbing as to close his mind to the acquisition of modern fact; and to Cooper's denial of what he had implied he listened with a polite but incredulous smile.