It is said that if you cast a pebble into the ocean, at the mouth of our harbor, the vibration made in the water passes gradually on till it strikes the icy barriers of the deep at the south pole.  The spread of Cooper’s reputation is not confined within narrower limits.  The Spy is read in all the written dialects of Europe, and in some of those of Asia.  The French, immediately after its first appearance, gave it to the multitudes who read their far-diffused language, and placed it among the first works of its class.  It was rendered into Castilian, and passed into the hands of those who dwell under the beams of the Southern Cross.  At length it passed the eastern frontier of Europe, and the latest record I have seen of its progress towards absolute universality, is contained in a statement of the International Magazine, derived, I presume, from its author, that in 1847 it was published in a Persian translation at Ispahan.  Before this time, I doubt not, they are reading it in some of the languages of Hindostan, and, if the Chinese ever translated anything, it would be in the hands of the many millions who inhabit the far Cathay.

I have spoken of the hesitation which American critics felt in admitting the merits of the Spy, on account of crudities in the plot or the composition, some of which, no doubt, really existed.  An exception must be made in favor of the Port Folio, which, in a notice written by Mrs. Sarah Hall, mother of the editor of that periodical, and author of Conversations on the Bible, gave the work a cordial welcome; and Cooper, as I am informed, never forgot this act of timely and ready kindness.

It was perhaps favorable to the immediate success of the Spy, that Cooper had few American authors to divide with him the public attention.  That crowd of clever men and women who now write for the magazines, who send out volumes of essays, sketches, and poems, and who supply the press with novels, biographies, and historical works, were then, for the most part, either stammering their lessons in the schools, or yet unborn.  Yet it is worthy of note, that just about the time that the Spy made its appearance, the dawn of what we now call our literature was just breaking.  The concluding number of Dana’s Idle Man, a work neglected at first, but now numbered among the best things of the kind in our language, was issued in the same month.  The Sketch Book was then just completed; the world was admiring it, and its author was meditating Bracebridge Hall.  Miss Sedgwick, about the same time, made her first essay in that charming series of novels of domestic life in New England, which have gained her so high a reputation.  Percival, now unhappily silent, had just put to press a volume of poems.  I have a copy of an edition of Hallock’s Fanny, published in the same year; the poem of Yamoyden, by Eastburn and Sands, appeared almost simultaneously