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 scanty indications of that genius which was to find its true sphere and full scope in the trackless prairies of his native land, and its path upon the mountain-wave he had ridden in buoyant youth.  But the same year produced The Spy, still considered by many to be his masterpiece, and from that production his fame was secure; and not only America but British voices, exhorted Sir Walter to look to his laurels.  Certainly there was a little more reason in calling Cooper the American Scott than in pronouncing Klopstock the German Milton.

The successful novelist visited Europe a few years after this ’sign and seal’ of his literary renown, and spent a considerable period among the principalities and powers of Old-World Christendom.  In Paris and London especially he was lionised to the top of his bent.  Sir Walter met him in the French metropolis in 1826; and in his diary of November 3, after recording a morning visit to ‘Cooper the American novelist,’ adds:  ’this man, who has shewn so much genius, has a good deal of the manners or want of manners peculiar to his countrymen.’  Three days later we find the following entry:  ’Cooper came to breakfast, but we were obsédes partout.  Such a number of Frenchmen bounced in successively, and exploded—­I mean discharged—­their compliments, that I could hardly find an opportunity to speak a word or entertain Mr Cooper at all.’[Footnote:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott.] The ‘illustrious stranger’ appears to have spent about ten years in Europe, for which he was, perhaps, in a literary point of view, none the better; as—­to use the words of a periodical of the day—­’he did not carry back the same fresh spirit that he brought, something of which must be attributed, no doubt, to the years which intervened; but something, too, to his abandonment of that mother-ground which to him, as to the fabled Antaeus, was the source of strength.’  The autumn of his life glided quietly on amid the pleasures and pains of literature; its sombre close being pleasantly illuminated by the rays of spring-promise that radiated around the young brow of his daughter, which the dying veteran might well hope would be matured into ‘glorious summer by the sun of’ time. Valeat signum!