hich he gave a favorable
account of the working of our institutions, and vindicated his country
from various flippant and ill-natured misrepresentations of foreigners. It
is rather too measured in style, but is written from a mind full of the
subject, and from a memory wonderfully stored with particulars. Although
twenty-four years have elapsed since its publication, but little of the
vindication has become obsolete.

Cooper loved his country and was proud of her history and her
institutions, but it puzzles many that he should have appeared, at
different times, as her eulogist, and her censor. My friends, she is
worthy both of praise and of blame, and Cooper was not the man to shrink
from bestowing either, at what seemed to him the proper time. He defended
her from detractors abroad; he sought to save her from flatterers at home.
I will not say that he was in as good humor with his country when he
wrote _Home at Found_, as when he wrote his _Notions of the Americans_,
but this I will say that whether he commended or censured, he did it in
the sincerity of his heart, as a true American, and in the belief that it
would do good. His _Notions of the Americans_ were more likely to lessen
than to increase his popularity in Europe, inasmuch as they were put forth
without the slightest regard to European prejudices.

In 1829, he brought out the novel entitled the _Wept of Wishton-Wish_, one
of the few of his works which we now rarely hear mentioned. He was engaged
in the composition of a third nautical tale, which he afterwards published
under the name of the _Water-Witch,_ when the memorable revolution of the
Three Days of July broke out. He saw a government, ruling by fear and in
defiance of public opinion, overthrown in a few hours, with little
bloodshed; he saw the French nation, far from being intoxicated with their
new liberty, peacefully addressing themselves to the discussion of the
institutions under which they were to live. A work which Cooper afterwards
published, his _Residence in Europe_, gives the outline of a plan of
government for France furnished by him at that time, to La Fayette, with
whom he was in habits of close and daily intimacy. It was his idea to give
permanence to the new order of things by associating two strong parties in
its support, the friends of legitimacy and the republicans. He suggested
that Henry V. should be called to the hereditary throne of France, a youth
yet to be educated as the head o