with birds, and
flowers, and trees, and all the picturesque varieties of land and water
which render Cooperstown a paradise to the lover of nature?

In the last _International_ we sketched the career of Mr. Cooper, and
gave an account of his writings, and an estimate of their value. What we
add here shall relate to the work which entitles his daughter to share
his eminence. "Rural Hours" is one of the most charming contributions
literature has ever received from the hand of a woman. Though in the
simple form of a diary, it is scarcely less than Thomson's "Seasons" a
poem; yet while seeming continually to reflect the most poetical phases
of nature and of rural life--so delicate is the appreciation of natural
beauty, and so pure and unaffected and exquisitely graceful the style of
composition--it has throughout even a Flemish truth and particularity of
detail. If we were called upon to name a literary performance that is
more than any other American in its whole character, we cannot now think
of one that would sooner receive this praise. A record of real
observations during the daily walks of many years in a secluded town, or
of the changes which the seasons brought with their various gifts and
forces into domestic experience, it is a series of pictures which could
no more have been made in another country than so many paintings on
canvas of scenes by Otsego lake. The leaves are blown over by Otsego
airs, or if the eye grows heavy and the pages are unturned it is for
slumberous spells that attach to delineations of the sunshine and
silence of Otsego's August noons. And the views Miss Cooper gives us of
the characters and occupations of the agricultural population in that
part of the country, who wear curiously interblended the old English and
Dutch habits with here and there a sign of the French, and the
republican freedom which in three generations has taken the tone of
nature, are as distinctive as the descriptions of changes which the
maple assumes in the autumn, or of the harvest of Indian corn, or a deer
hunt in the snow. Upon a careless reading of "Rural Hours" we might
fancy that Miss Cooper was less familiar than perhaps should be for such
a task with botany and other sciences, but a closer study of the book
reveals the most minute and comprehensive knowledge, so interfused that
it is without technical forms only, and never deficient in precision.
The style is everywhere not only delightfully free, while artistica