lus of
the railroad system, then in its infancy. Both together were disclosing,
though more to the imagination than to the eye, the wealth that lay hid
in the unsettled regions of the West. They were active agents,
therefore, in creating one of those periods of speculative prosperity
which are sure to recur when any new and unforeseen avenue to sudden
fortune is laid open. The immense field for endeavor revealed by the
prospective establishment of flourishing communities reacted unfavorably
upon the intellectual movement which had begun in a feeble way (p. 119)
to show itself twenty years before. The attraction of mighty enterprises
which held out to the hope promises of the highest temporal triumphs,
was a competition that mere literary and scholastic pursuits, with their
doubtful success and precarious rewards, could not well maintain. The
country certainly went back for a time in higher things in consequence
of that rapid material progress which drew to its further development
the youthful energy and ability of the entire land. To make money and to
make it rapidly seemed to be the one object of life.

Such a fever of speculative prosperity wholly absorbing the thoughts and
activities of men in the acquisition of wealth, would have been viewed
by Cooper at any time with indifference, even if it did not inspire
disgust. But a greater change than he knew had come over him. It is
clear that he had now grown largely out of sympathy with the energy and
enterprise which were doing so much to build up the prosperity and power
of his country. His nature had come into a profound sympathy with the
quiet, the culture, and the polish of the lands he had left behind. His
spirit could no longer be incited by the romance that lay hid in the
fiery energies of trade. In the tumultuousness of the life about him, he
could see little but a restless and vulgar exertion for the creation of
wealth. The perpetual bustle and change were not to his taste. He spoke
of it afterwards, in one of his works, with a certain grim humor
peculiarly his own. America he said, was a country for alibis. The whole
nation was in motion; and everybody was everywhere, and nobody was
anywhere.

Feelings of this kind had begun to come over him long before his (p. 120)
return from abroad. He had been affected by his surroundings to an
extent of which he was only vaguely conscious. While in Europe he
admitted that he found growing in his nature a strong dist