rd of their early
perils and privations in the grateful reverence which was paid to them by
the contemporaries of their children and grandchildren. Innumerable
traditionary anecdotes of those dark days of suffering and struggle,
unrecorded in print, yet lingered in the memories of the people, and were
told in the nights of winter around the farm-house fire; and of no part of
the country was this more true than of the region in which the scene of
the novel is laid. The enthusiasm with which it was there read was the
best tribute to the substantial fidelity of its delineations. All over the
country, it enlisted in its behalf the powerful sentiment of patriotism;
and whatever the critics might say, the author had the satisfaction of
feeling that the heart of the people was with him.

Abroad, "The Spy" was received with equal favor. It was soon translated
into most of the languages of Europe; and even the "gorgeous East" opened
for it its rarely moving portals. In 1847, a Persian version was published
in Ispahan; and by this time it may have crossed the Chinese wall, and be
delighting the pig-tailed critics and narrow-eyed beauties of Pekin.

The success of "The Spy" unquestionably determined Cooper's vocation, and
made him a man of letters. But he had not yet found where his true
strength lay. His training and education had not been such as would seem
to be a good preparation for a literary career. His reading had been
desultory, and not extensive; and the habit of composition had not been
formed in early life. Indeed, in mere style, in the handling of the tools
of his craft, Cooper never attained a master's ease and power. In his
first two novels the want of technical skill and literary accomplishment
was obvious; and the scenery, subjects, and characters of these novels did
not furnish him with the opportunity of turning to account the peculiar
advantages which had come to him from the events of his childhood and
youth. In his infancy he was taken to Cooperstown, a spot which his father
had just begun to reclaim from the dominion of the wilderness. Here his
first impressions of the external world, as well as of life and manners,
were received. At the age of sixteen he became a midshipman in the United
States navy, and remained in the service for six years. A father who, in
training up his son for the profession of letters, should send him into
the wilderness in his infancy and to sea at sixteen, would seem to be
shooting