electric telegraph; Durand, then, one of the first of engravers, and
now no less illustrious as a painter; Henry James Anderson, whose
acquirements might awaken the envy of the ripest scholars of the old
world; Halleck, the poet and wit; Verplanck, who has given the world the
best edition of Shakspeare for general readers; Dr. King, now at the head
of Columbia College, and his two immediate predecessors in that office. I
might enlarge the list with many other names of no less distinction. The
army and navy contributed their proportion of members, whose names are on
record in our national history. Cooper when in town was always present,
and I remember being struck with the inexhaustible vivacity of his
conversation and the minuteness of his knowledge, in everything which
depended upon acuteness of observation and exactness of recollection. I
remember, too, being somewhat startled, coming as I did from the seclusion
of a country life, with a certain emphatic frankness in his manner, which,
however, I came at last to like and to admire. The club met in the hotel
called Washington Hall, the site of which, is now occupied by part of the
circuit of Stewart's marble building.

_Lionel Lincoln_, which cannot be ranked among the successful productions
of Cooper, was published in 1825; and in the year following appeared the
_Last of the Mohicans_ which more than recovered the ground lost by its
predecessor. In this work, the construction of the narrative has signal
defects, but it is one of the triumphs of the author's genius that he
makes us unconscious of them while we read. It is only when we have had
time to awake from the intense interest in which he has held us by the
vivid reality of his narrative, and have begun to search for faults in
cold blood, that we are able to find them, In the _Last of the Mohicans,_
we have a bolder portraiture of. Leatherstocking than in the _Pioneers_.

This work was published in 1826, and in the same year Cooper sailed with
his family for Europe. He left New York as one of the vessels of war,
described in his romances of the sea, goes out of port, amidst the thunder
of a parting salute from the big guns on the batteries. A dinner was given
him just before his departure, attended by most of the distinguished men
of the city, at which Peter A. Jay presided, and Dr. King addressed him in
terms which some then thought too glowing, but which would now seem
sufficiently temperate, expressing the goo