-"The Den" being a back room in Wiley's bookstore in Wall Street. Cooper always numbered among his friends the best and most prominent citi

zens.

In his next novel, "The Pioneers," Cooper uses the wilderness as a background; and here we meet for the first time the primitive American Hawk Eye, or Natty Bumppo, a gentle, deliberate and manly child of Nature whom the Indians call Leather Stocking. It takes five tales to unfold his adventurous career, and through these he becomes one of the celebrated characters of fiction. "A Drama in Five Acts " Cooper termed them and as we read on, we grow very fond of this philosopher of the woods.

We must not take the books in the order in which Cooper wrote them for he buried and resuscitated Natty Bumppo, but this must be our sequence; "The Deer Slayer"; "Last of the Mohicans"; "Pathfinder"; "Pioneers "; and "Prairie."

"The

And after "The Pioneers,' The Pioneers," he wrote Pilot." This was the outcome of a dispute about Scott's "Pirate "- Cooper insisting that Scott could have written a better sea-tale, if he had ever been a sailor; and he wrote "The Pilot" to prove his point, and in it he caught a graphic portraiture. Long Tom Coffin, the Nantucket whaler, sturdy, homely and full of action, we recognise as the gallant Revolutionary hero, John Paul Jones. The action is

splendid -the tale savours of salty tang as had the forest tales, of spruce and hemlock.

Cooper has sometimes been called "The American Scott." It is true that both were story-tellers but Scott had more humour; he never lingered over side issues like Cooper, but went slowly and surely to the heart of his story; Cooper could never make people talk while Scott indulged in long conversations; Scott created many prominent characters while Cooper has but few. But after writing "The Pilot," the conservative "Edinburgh Review" announced that the "Empire of the Sea" had been conceded to Cooper by acclaim.

In 1826, the second "Leather Stocking Tale," "The Last of the Mohicans," was published. Some consider this Cooper's masterpiece. Chingachgook and his son Uncas are manly, noble Indians; they are true to life as far as they go, but they are not representative Indians - but Cooper had a right, if he chose, to leave out the uglier types of the race.

In the same year, 1826, Cooper went abroad and remained seven years; and in Europe he wrote "The Prairie "his most poetic of the "Leather Stocking" series "The Red Rover," and other fine sea-tales. And it was wonderful how his swift popularity amazed the world! for his books were at once published on both sides of the Atlantic not only in English but in many languages: among others,

French and German and Norwegian and Russian and Arabic and Persian. It is said that of all other American authors, only Mrs. Stowe with her "Uncle Tom's Cabin" reached such celebrity.

In 1833, Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, writes:

"In every city of Europe that I visited, the works of Cooper were conspicuously placed in the windows of every book-shop. They are published as soon as he produces them in thirty-four different places. They have been seen by American travellers in the language of Turkey and Persia, in Constantinople, in Egypt, at Jerusalem, at Ispahan. England is reading Irving-Europe is reading Cooper."

It was the novelty of his subject that held all captive, and for a time he had the field to himself; and it is disappointing to approach another side of Cooper's character which embittered his closing years, and rendered his later works unpopular. This was his controversial spirit. Of a forcible, impetuous disposition, full of prejudice, he could never brook a hostile criticism.

A fearless fighter, there was to him no neutral ground. Every critical speech about our young Republic he attacked in word and writing, and on his return "lectured his countrymen gratis"; for he liked not their manners, their love of gain, and fondness for boasting and admiration. So in his books he strayed away from the path of the story-teller to