lk about dissenters and the establishment was natural and proper
enough in a work written ostensibly by the citizen of a country in
which there was a state church. But Cooper went much farther than (p. 021)
this in the reflections and moral observations which are scattered up
and down the pages of this novel. These represent fairly views widely
held at the time in America, and may not impossibly express the
personal opinions he himself then entertained. He speaks in one place,
in his assumed character of an Englishman, of the solidity and purity
of our ethics as giving a superior tone to our moral feelings as
contrasted with the French. He goes out of his way to compliment
George III. One of the personages in the novel was tempted to admit
something to his credit that he did not deserve. The love of truth,
however, finally prevailed. But it was not because the man himself had
any innate love of truth, but because "he had been too much round the
person of our beloved monarch not to retain all the impressions of his
youth." Passages such as these are remarkable when we consider the
sentiments in regard to England that Cooper subsequently came to
express. If they do not show with certainty his opinions at that time,
they do show the school in which he had been brought up: they mark
clearly the extent and violence of the reaction which in after years
carried him to the opposite extreme.

In its plan and development "Precaution" was a compromise between the
purely fashionable novel and that collection of moral disquisitions of
which Hannah More's Coelebs was the great exemplar, and still remained
the most popular representative. As in most tales of high life, nobody
of low condition plays a prominent part in the story, save for the
purpose of setting off the dukes, earls, baronets, generals, and
colonels that throng its pages. A novelist in his first production
never limits his creative activity in any respect; and Cooper, (p. 022)
moreover, knew the public well enough to be aware that a fictitious
narrative which aimed to describe aristocratic society might perhaps
succeed without much literary merit, but would be certain to fail
without an abundance of lords. The leading characters, however,
whether of higher or lower degree, are planned upon the moral model.
They either preach or furnish awful examples. It would certainly be
most unfair to an author to judge him, as in this case, by a work
which he had begun without