mers he spent in Cooperstown. To this village he paid a visit in
June, 1834, after having been away from it entirely for about sixteen
years. The recollections of his early life had always endeared it to his
memory, and in it he now determined to take up his permanent abode.
Accordingly he acquired possession of his father's old place, which for
a long period had remained unoccupied. The house had received from the
inhabitants the name of Templeton Hall, with a direct reference to "The
Pioneers." Everything about it was rapidly hastening to ruin. Cooper at
once began repairs upon it, and after these had been fully completed he
made it his only residence. It was in this little village, upon the
shore of the lake which his pen has made famous, that he spent the
remainder of his life. There he wrote nearly all the works which he
produced after his return to his native land. Its seclusion and quiet
gave him ample opportunities for undisturbed literary exertion; the
beauty of the surroundings ministered constantly to his passion for
scenery; and of the world outside he saw sufficient to satisfy his
wishes in the frequent journeys which business compelled him to make to
the great cities.

Yet, though his latter days were spent in the country, the life (p. 118)
he led henceforward deserves anything but the name of a pastoral. With
the return from Europe begins the epic period of Cooper's career. The
next ten years, in particular, were years of battle and storm. He had
been criticised harshly and unjustly; he came back prepared and disposed
to criticise. His feelings found expression at once. The America to
which he had returned seemed to him much worse than that from which he
had gone. In his opinion nearly everything had deteriorated. Manners,
morals, the whole spirit of the nation, struck him as being on a lower
level. Yet the change was not really in the people; it was in himself.
The country had been moving on in the line of its natural bustling
development; he, on the contrary, had been going back in sentiment. In
one particular there was a certain justification for the dislike
expressed by him for the novel things he saw. The business of the entire
land was in a feverish condition. The Erie Canal, completed the year
before his departure for Europe, had opened an unbroken water way from
the Atlantic sea-board to the farthest shores of the great lakes. To
this stimulus to population and trade was added the expected stimu