of his family, on the 14th of September, the day before that on which he should have completed his sixty-second year.  He died, apparently without pain, in peace and religious hope.  The relations of man to his Maker, and to that state of being for which the present is but a preparation, had occupied much of his thoughts during his whole lifetime, and he crossed, with a serene composure, the mysterious boundary which divides this life from the next.

The departure of such a man, in the full strength of his faculties,—­on whom the country had for thirty years looked as one of the permanent ornaments of its literature, and whose name had been so often associated with praise, with renown, with controversy, with blame, but never with death,—­diffused a universal awe.  It was as if an earthquake had shaken the ground on which we stood, and showed the grave opening by our path.  In the general grief for his loss, his virtues only were remembered; and his failings forgotten.

Of his failings I have said little; such as he had were obvious to all the world; they lay on the surface of his character; those who knew him least made the most account of them.  With a character so made up of positive qualities—­a character so independent and uncompromising, and with a sensitiveness far more acute than he was willing to acknowledge, it is not surprising that occasions frequently arose to bring him, sometimes into friendly collision, and sometimes in to graver disagreements and misunderstandings with his fellow-men.  For his infirmities, his friends found an ample counterpoise in the generous sincerity of his nature.  He never thought of disguising his opinions, and he abhorred all disguise in others; he did not even deign to use that show of regard towards those of whom he did not think well, which the world tolerates, and almost demands.  A manly expression of opinion, however different from his own, commanded his respect.  Of his own works, he spoke with the same freedom as of the works of others; and never hesitated to express his judgment of a book for the reason that it was written by himself:  yet he could bear with gentleness any dissent from the estimate lie placed on his own writings.  His character was like the bark of the cinnamon, a rough and astringent rind without, and an intense sweetness within.  Those who penetrated below the surface found a genial temper, warm affections, and a heart with ample place for his friends, their pursuits, their good name, their welfare.  They found him a philanthropist, though not precisely after the fashion of the day; a religious man, most devout where devotion is most apt to be a feeling rather than a custom, in the household circle; hospitable, and to the extent of his means liberal-handed in acts of charity.  They found, also, that though in general he would as soon have thought of giving up an old friend as of giving up an opinion, he was not proof against testimony, and could part with a mistaken opinion as one parts with an old friend who has been proved faithless and unworthy.  In short, Cooper was one of those who, to be loved, must be intimately known.