of silence, submission, and acquiescence!  Booksellers would have enriched him; society would have caressed him; political distinction would have crowned him:  he had only to watch the course of public sentiment, and so dispose himself that he should seem to lead where he only followed, and all comfortable things would have been poured into his lap.  But he preferred to breast the stream, to speak ungrateful truths.  He set a wholesome example in this respect; none the less valuable because so few have had the manliness and self-reliance to imitate him.  More than twenty years ago De Tocqueville said,—­“I know of no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America”:  words which we fear are not less true to-day than when they were written.  Cooper’s dauntless courage would have been less admirable, had he been hard, cold, stern, and impassive:  but he was none of these.  He was full of warm affections, cordial, sympathetic, and genial; he had a woman’s tenderness of heart; he was the most faithful of friends; and in his own home no man was ever more gentle, gracious, and sweet.  The blows he received fell upon a heart that felt them keenly; but he bared his breast none the less resolutely to the contest because it was not protected by an armor of insensibility.

But we must bring this long paper to a close.  We cannot give to it the interest which comes from personal recollections.  We saw Cooper once, and but once.  This was the very year before he died, in his own home, and amid the scenes which his genius has made immortal.  It was a bright midsummer’s day, and we walked together about the village, and around the shores of the lake over which the canoe of Indian John had glided.  His own aspect was as sunny as that of the smiling heavens above us; age had not touched him with its paralyzing finger:  his vigorous frame, elastic step, and animated glance gave promise of twenty years more of energetic life.  His sturdy figure, healthy face, and a slight bluffness of manner reminded one more of his original profession than of the life and manners of a man of letters.  He looked like a man who had lived much in the open air,—­upon whom the rain had fallen, and against whom the wind had blown.  His conversation was hearty, spontaneous, and delightful from its frankness and fulness, but it was not pointed or brilliant; you remembered the healthy ring of the words, but not the words themselves.  We recollect, that, as we were standing together on the shores of the lake,—­shores which are somewhat tame, and a lake which can claim no higher epithet than that of pretty,—­he said:  “I suppose it would be patriotic to say that this is finer than Como, but we know that it is not.”  We found a chord of sympathy in our common impressions of the beauty of Sorrento, about which, and his residence there, he spoke with contagious animation.  Who could have thought that that rich and abundant life was so near its close?