utiful, looking as it did down the Valley of (p. 264)
the Susquehanna. The farm, too, had its picturesque and poetical
features; but unhappily it was little adapted to practical agriculture.
It stood on a hill-side, the abruptness of which was only occasionally
relieved by a few acres of level land. Much of it was still covered with
the original forest; and a good deal of the cleared land was full of
stumps. To superintend the removal of these latter was one of Cooper's
chief relaxations from mental labor. It is a desirable thing to do, but
it has never been found pecuniarily profitable in itself. To this place
Cooper daily drove in the summer season, and spent two or three hours
directing the operations that were going on, finding constantly new ways
to spend money, and doubtless pleasing himself occasionally with the
fancy that the farm would at some time pay expenses. And in the best
sense it did pay expenses. It gave regular diversion to his life; it
ministered constantly to his enjoyment of the beautiful in scenery; and
it occupied his thoughts with perpetual projects of improvement for
which its character furnished unlimited opportunities. He had bought it
for pleasure and not for profit; and in that it yielded him a full
return for the money invested.

CHAPTER XII. (p. 265)

1850-1851.

Cooper, at the time he published his last novel, was more than sixty
years of age; but as yet he showed no traces of physical or intellectual
decay. His literary activity remained unabated, though he was now
purposing to direct it to other fields than that of fiction. A decided
change was likewise taking place in the estimation in which he was held
by the public. He had not become popular, to be sure; but he had become
less unpopular. There was, moreover, a feeling pretty generally
prevalent that he had been hardly used; that in many respects he had
been a wronged and persecuted man. The ranks of those who had remained
faithful to him during all these years of obloquy were beginning to be
largely swelled from the newer generation which had neither part in, nor
knowledge of, the bitter controversies in which he had been concerned.
His friends were purposing to give a public dinner in his honor in order
to show their regard for him as a man, and their appreciation of the
credit his writings had brought to his country. Before this project
could be carried into effect,