ef evils in our social condition. In
a previous number of this magazine we have asserted the ability and
eminently honorable character of a large class of American journals. The
spirit of another class, also in many instances conducted with ability,
is altogether bad and base; jealous, detracting, suspicious, "delighting
to deprave;" betraying a familiarity with low standards in mind and
morals, and a consciousness habituated to interested views and sordid
motives; degrading every thing that wears the appearance of greatness,
sometimes by plain denial and insolent contempt, and sometimes by
wretched innuendo and mingled lie and sophistry; effectually dissipating
all the romance of character, and all the enthusiasm of life; hating
dignity, having no sympathies with goodness, insensible to the very
existence of honor as a spring of human conduct; treating patriotism and
disinterestedness with an elaborate sneer, and receiving the suggestions
of duty with a horse-laugh. There is a difference not easily to be
mistaken between the lessening of men which is occasioned by the
loftiness of the platform whence the observation is made, and that which
is produced by the malignant envy of the observer; between the gloomy
judicial ferocity of a Pope or a Tacitus, and the villain levity which
revels in the contemplation of imputed faults, or that fiendishness of
feeling which gloats and howls over the ruins of reputations which
itself has stabbed.

For a few years after Mr. Cooper's return from Europe, he was repeatedly
urged by his friends to put a stop to the libels of newspapers by an
appeal to the law; but he declined. He perhaps supposed that the common
sense of the people would sooner or later discover and right the wrong
that was done to him by those who, without the slightest justification,
invaded the sacredest privacies of his life for subjects of public
observation. He finally decided, at the end of five years after his
return, to appeal to the tribunals, in every case in which any thing not
by himself submitted to public criticism, in his works, should be
offensively treated, within the limits of the state of New-York. Some
twenty suits were brought by him, and his course was amply vindicated by
unanimous verdicts in his behalf. But the very conduct to which the
press had compelled him was made a cause of ungenerous prejudices. He
has never objected to the widest latitude or extremest severity in
criticisms of his writing