outhampton, which town is recorded as being
"noted for long passages, bow-windows, and old maids." Here they found
pleasant lodgings, friends, and a sister of Mrs. Cooper's whereby time
was pleasantly passed by the family while Cooper went up to London to
see his publishers. On his return they were soon aboard the _Camilla_,
"shorn of one wing" (one of her two boilers was out of order), and on
their way to France. At midnight they were on deck for their first sight
of France; "Land!--of ghostly hue in the bright moonlight, and other
lights glittering from the two towers on the headlands near by." Landing
at the small port of Havre, they had some weary hours of search before
finding shelter in _Hotel d'Angleterre_. By a "skirted wonder" of the
port their luggage soon passed the customs next morning and they were
started for Paris. They were charmed with the dark old sombre,
mysterious towers and fantastic roofs of Rouen, where Cooper bought a
large traveling carriage, in which they safely passed the "ugly dragons"
that "thrust out their grinning heads from the Normandy towns" on the
way to the heart of France. From the windmills of Montmartre they took
in the whole vast capital at a glance. A short stay was made at a small
hotel, where soon after their arrival they engaged "a governess for the
girls." She proved to be "a furious royalist," teaching the children
that "Washington was a rebel, Lafayette a monster, and Louis XVI a
martyr." Under the rule of returned royalists was attempted the
exclusion of even the _name_ of Bonaparte from French history. "My
girls," Cooper wrote, "have shown me the history of France--officially
prepared for schools, in which there is no sort of allusion to him."
Their next venture was Hotel de Jumieges in a small garden, far from
the Faubourg St. Germain, where they had an apartment of six rooms.
Cooper wrote: "The two lower floors were occupied as a girls'
boarding-school;--the reason for dwelling in it, our own daughters were
in the school; on the second floor there was nothing but our own
apartment." And here, next door to their nun-neighbors of the convent
St. Maur, Cooper wrote the last pages of "The Prairie." It was published
in the autumn of 1826, by Lea and Carey, of Philadelphia.

[Illustration: WHITEWALL WHARF, 1826.]

[Illustration: KEEP OF CARISBROOK.]

[Illustration: HAVRE, BY NIGHT.]

[Illustration: WINDMILLS OF MONTMARTRE.]

[Illustration: THE CONVENT ST. MAUR.]

[Illu