take
the side opposed to that which is enforced with exasperating frequency.
The fullest sympathizer is sure to get tired of this everlasting slaying
of the slain. A similar effect is, indeed, likely to be produced upon
the victim of the criticism. Instead of being stirred to reflection,
repentance, or even indignation, he simply becomes bored. After a man
has been told a hundred times that he is provincial, the remark ceases
to be exciting. The things, therefore, that Cooper said incidentally are
even now the only ones that make any deep impression upon the mind. Like
all men, sensitive to the national honor, he felt keenly the (p. 166)
refusal of Congress to pass a copyright law. It led him to say twice,
but both times very quietly, that in spite of loud profession there was
little genuine sympathy in this country with art, or scholarship, or
letters. The absence of all heat and excitement gives to the remark a
weight that never belongs to his violent utterances and fierce
denunciations. We may hope that we have gained since his time; but even
at this day we have little to boast of, if the average cultivation of
the people, as well as its average morality, finds expression in the
laws. The record in these matters of the highest legislative body in the
land is still the most discreditable of that of any nation in
Christendom. To gratify the greed of a few traders, it has never refused
to lay heavy burdens upon scholarship and letters. It has steadily
imposed duties on the introduction of everything that could facilitate
the acquisition of learning, and further the development of art. It has
persistently stabbed literature under the pretence of encouraging
intelligence. It has never once been guilty of the weakness of yielding
for a moment to the virtuous impulse that would even contemplate the
enactment of a copyright law. If it ever does pass one, it will do so,
not because foreign authors have rights, but because native publishers
have quarrels. Thus consistent in its unwillingness to do an honest
thing from an honest motive, it will even then grant to selfishness what
has been invariably denied to justice.

There were other than faults of view or faults of statement that mark
Cooper's writings at this time. The two novels published during the year
1838 show a radical change in the attitude he assumed to his art. What
had been indicated in the stories whose scenes were laid in (p. 167)
Europe, was now c