harming
series of novels of domestic life in New England, which have gained her so
high a reputation. Percival, now unhappily silent, had just put to press a
volume of poems. I have a copy of an edition of Hallock's _Fanny_,
published in the same year; the poem of _Yamoyden,_ by Eastburn and Sands,
appeared almost simultaneously with it. Livingston was putting the
finishing hand to his _Report on the Penal Code of Louisiana,_ a work
written with such grave, persuasive eloquence, that it belongs as much to
our literature as to our jurisprudence. Other contemporaneous American
works there were, now less read. Paul Allen's poem of _Noah_ was just laid
on the counters of the booksellers. Arden published, at the same time, in
this city, a translation of Ovid's _Tristia_, in heroic verse, in which
the complaints of the effeminate Roman poet were rendered with great
fidelity to the original, and sometimes not without beauty. If I may speak
of myself, it was in that year that I timidly intrusted to the winds and
waves of public opinion a small cargo of my own--a poem entitled _The
Ages,_ and half a dozen shorter ones, in a thin duodecimo volume, printed
at Cambridge.

We had, at the same time, works of elegant literature, fresh from the
press of Great Britain, which are still read and admired. Barry Cornwall,
then a young suitor for fame, published in the same year his _Marcia
Colonna_; Byron, in the full strength and fertility of his genius, gave
the readers of English his tragedy of _Marino Faliero_, and was in the
midst of his spirited controversy with Bowles concerning the poetry of
Pope. The _Spy_ had to sustain a comparison with Scott's _Antiquary_,
published simultaneously with it, and with Lockhart's _Valerius_, which
seems to me one of the most remarkable works of fiction ever composed.

In 1823, and in his thirty-fourth year, Cooper brought out his novel of
the _Pioneers_, the scene of which was laid on the borders of his: own
beautiful lake. In a recent survey of Mr; Cooper's works, by one of his
admirers, it is intimated that the reputation of this work may have been,
in some degree factitious. I cannot think so; I cannot see how such a work
could fail of becoming, sooner or later, a favorite. It was several years
after its first appearance that I read the _Pioneers_, and I read it with
a delighted astonishment. Here, said I to myself, is the poet of rural
life in this country--our Hesiod, our Theocritus, except tha