gnorant criticism; and when at home, with equal courage
and equal energy, he breasted the current of public Opinion where he
deemed it to be wrong, and resisted those most formidable invasions of
right, wherein the many combine to oppress the one. His long controversy
with the press was too important an episode in his life to be passed over
by us without mention; though our limits will not permit us to make
anything more than a passing allusion to it. The opinion which will be
formed upon Cooper's course in this matter will depend, in a considerable
degree, upon the temperament of the critic. Timid men, cautious men, men
who love their ease, will call him Quixotic, rash, imprudent, to engage in
a controversy in which he had much to lose and little to gain; but the
reply to such suggestions is, that, if men always took counsel of
indolence, timidity, and selfishness, no good would ever be accomplished,
and no abuses ever be reformed. Cooper may not have been judicious in
everything he said and did; but that he was right in the main, both in
motive and conduct, we firmly believe. He acted from a high sense of duty;
there was no alloy of vindictiveness or love of money in the impulses
which moved him. Criticism the most severe and unsparing he accepted as
perfectly allowable, so long as it kept within the limits of literary
judgment; but any attack upon his personal character, especially any
imputation or insinuation involving a moral stain, he would not submit to.
He appealed to the laws of the land to vindicate his reputation and punish
his assailants. Long and gallant was the warfare he maintained,--a
friendless, solitary warfare,--and all the hydra-heads of the press
hissing and ejaculating their venom upon him,--with none to stand by his
side and wish him God-speed. But he persevered, and, what is more, he
succeeded: that, is to say, he secured all the substantial fruits of
success. He vindicated the principle for which he contended: he compelled
the newspapers to keep within the pale of literary criticism; he confirmed
the saying of President Jackson, that "desperate courage makes one a
majority."

Two of his novels, "Homeward Bound" and "Home as Found," bear a strong
infusion of the feelings which led to his contest with the press. After
the publication of these, he became much interested in the well-known
Anti-Rent agitation by which the State of New York was so long shaken; and
three of his novels, "Satanstoe," "Th