n. Thackeray called
him "the first ambassador whom the New World of letters sent to the
Old," and from the very first he identified American literature with
purity of life and elevation of character, with kindly humor and grace
of manner--qualities which it has never lost.

Two years after the appearance of the "Sketch Book," another star
suddenly flamed out upon the literary horizon, and for a time quite
eclipsed Irving in brilliancy. It waned somewhat in later years, but,
though we have come to see that it lacks the purity and gentle beauty of
its rival, it has still found a place among the brightest in our
literary heaven--where, indeed, only one or two of the first magnitude
shine. J. Fenimore Cooper was, like Irving, a product of New York state,
his father laying out the site of Cooperstown, on Lake Otsego, and
moving there from New Jersey in 1790, when his son was only a year old.
James, as the boy was known, was the eleventh of twelve
children--another instance of a single swan amid a flock of ducklings.

Cooperstown was at that time a mere outpost of civilization in the
wilderness, and it was in this wilderness that Cooper's boyhood was
passed. And just as Irving's boyhood left its impress on his work, so
did Cooper's in even greater degree. Mighty woods, broken only here and
there by tiny clearings, stretched around the little settlement; Indians
and frontiersmen, hunters, traders, trappers--all these were a part of
the boy's daily life. He grew learned in the lore of the woods, and laid
up unconsciously the stores from which he was afterwards to draw.

At the age of eleven, he was sent to a private school at Albany, and
three years later entered Yale. But he had the true woodland spirit; he
preferred the open air to the lecture-room, and was so careless in his
attendance at classes that, in his third year, he was dismissed from
college. There is some question whether this was a blessing or the
reverse. No doubt a thorough college training would have made Cooper
incapable of the loose and turgid style which characterizes all his
novels; but, on the other hand, he left college to enter the navy, and
there gained that knowledge of seamanship and of the ocean which make
his sea stories the best of their kind that have ever been written. His
sea career was cut short, just before the opening of the war of 1812, by
his marriage into an old Tory family, who insisted that he resign from
the service. He did so, and en