l the writings of this
period these offenders were soundly castigated. Especially was this true
of the preface. It was there, if anywhere, that Cooper was apt to
concentrate all the ill-humor he felt--his wrath against the race and
his scorn of the individual. But the two feelings that henceforth became
conspicuously noticeable in nearly all his writings were his regard for
the Episcopal church and his dislike of New England. They manifest
themselves sometimes deliciously, sometimes disagreeably. In the midst
of a story remote as possible from the occurrences of modern life,
suddenly turn up remarks upon the apostolic origin of bishops, or the
desirability of written prayers, and the need of a liturgy. The
impropriety of their introduction, from a literary point of view, Cooper
never had sufficient delicacy of taste to feel. Less excusable were the
attacks he made upon those whose religious views differed from his own.
The insults he sometimes offered to possible readers were as needless as
they were brutal. In one of his later novels he mentioned "the rowdy
religion--half-cant, half-blasphemy, that Cromwell and his associates
entailed on so many Englishmen." There is little reason to doubt that
under proper conditions Cooper could easily have developed into a
sincere, narrow-minded, and ferocious bigot.[2]

[Footnote 2: Poe wrote a review of _Wyandotte_ which
appeared in _Graham's Magazine_ for November, 1843.
As notices of Cooper's novels then went, this may be
regarded as a favorable one, though in it the critic
took occasion to divide works of fiction into two
classes: one of a popular sort which anybody could
write, and the other of a kind intrinsically more
worthy and artistic, and capable of being produced
only by the few. At the head of the former class he
placed Cooper, but had the grace not to include his
own name in the latter class which he had created for
himself. The reader will be edified to learn from a
life of Poe, written by John H. Ingram (2 vols.,
London, 1880), that the writing of this review was an
act of heroic and even desperate hardihood. Poe, it
seems, had before valorously depreciated Halleck; bu