an John of _The Pioneers_. Natty Bumpo, however, is a
creation of no common unity and consistency. There are lapses and flaws,
and Natty is made to say things which only Cooper, in his most verbosely
didactic vein, could have uttered. But on the whole the impression left
is good and true. In the dignity and simplicity of the old backwoodsman
there is something almost Hebraic. With his naive vanity and strong
reverent piety, his valiant wariness, his discriminating cruelty, his
fine natural sense of right and wrong, his rough limpid honesty, his
kindly humour, his picturesque dialect, and his rare skill in woodcraft,
he has all the breadth and roundness of a type and all the
eccentricities and peculiarities of a portrait.

See _James Fenimore Cooper_ (Boston, 1883), by Thomas R. Lounsbury in
the "American Men of Letters" series; Griswold, _Prose Writers of
America_ (Philadelphia, 1847); J. R. Lowell, _Fable for Critics_; M.
A. de Wolfe Howe, _American Bookmen_ (New York, 1898); and the
introduction by Mowbray Morris to Macmillan's uniform edition of
Cooper's novels (London, 1900). (W. E. H.)

COOPER, PETER (1791-1883), American manufacturer, inventor and
philanthropist, was born in New York city on the 12th of February 1791.
His grandfathers and his father served in the War of American
Independence. He received practically no schooling, but worked with his
father at hat-making in New York city, at brewing in Peekskill, at
brick-making in Catskill, and again at brewing in Newburgh. At seventeen
he was apprenticed to a coach-builder in New York city. On coming of age
he got employment at Hempstead, Long Island, making machines for
shearing cloth; three years afterwards he set up in this business for
himself, having bought the sole right to manufacture such machinery in
the state of New York. Business prospered during the War of 1812, but
fell off after the peace. He turned his shop into a furniture factory;
soon sold this and for a short time was engaged in the grocery business
on the site of the present Bible House, opposite Cooper Union; and then
invested in a glue and isinglass factory, situated for twenty-one years
in Manhattan (where the Park Avenue Hotel was built later) and then in
Brooklyn. About 1828 he built the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore,
Maryland, the foundation of his great fortune. The Baltimore & Ohio
railway was to cross his property, and, after various inventions aiming
to do awa