w fields and wrote with
different aims.

* * * * *

During all these years his popularity had continued unabated, though his
last two novels could hardly be said to have met with the favor which
had been accorded to most of those which had preceded them. It is
certainly a convincing proof of the wide reputation he had gained before
he went to Europe, that five editions of "The Prairie," the first work
he wrote after his arrival, were arranged to be published at the same
time. Two were to come out in Paris, one in French and one in English;
one in London; one in Berlin; and one in Philadelphia. But even this
success was soon surpassed. It is hard to credit the accounts that are
given on unimpeachable testimony. One statement, however, is too
important to be overlooked, coming from the source it does. In the
controversy going on in this country in 1833, in regard to the part
Cooper had taken in the finance discussion, which will be mentioned in
its proper place, Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph,
published a letter in defense of his absent friend. In it he bore
witness in the following words to the popularity of the novelist in the
Old World: "I have visited, in Europe, many countries," said he, "and
what I have asserted of the fame of Mr. Cooper I assert from personal
knowledge. In every city of Europe that I visited the works of Cooper
were conspicuously placed in the windows of every bookshop. They (p. 077)
are published as soon as he produces them in thirty-four different
places in Europe. They have been seen by American travelers in the
languages of Turkey and Persia, in Constantinople, in Egypt, at
Jerusalem, at Ispahan."

CHAPTER V. (p. 078)

1830.

The month of December, 1830, which saw the publication of "The Water
Witch," closed the first and far the most fortunate decade of Cooper's
literary life. In the decade which followed began that career of
controversy which lasted, with little intermission, until his death. By
it his reputation and his fortunes were profoundly affected. It worked a
complete revolution both in the sentiments with which he regarded others,
and in the sentiments with which others regarded him. The most intense
lover of his country, he became the most unpopular man of letters to
whom it has ever given birth. For years a storm of abuse fell upon him,
which for violence, for virul