rankness, his
disdain of everything that wears the faintest semblance of deceit, his
refusal to comply with current abuses, and the courage with which, on all
occasions, he asserted what he deemed truth, and combated what he thought
error.

The circumstances of Cooper's early life were remarkably suited to confirm
the natural hardihood and manliness of his character, and to call forth
and exercise that extraordinary power of observation, which accumulated
the materials afterwards wielded and shaped by his genius. His father,
while an inhabitant of Burlington, in New Jersey, on the pleasant banks of
the Delaware, was the owner of large possessions on the borders of the
Otsego Lake in our own state, and here, in the newly-cleared fields, he
built, in 1786, the first house in Cooperstown. To this home, Cooper, who
was born in Burlington, in the year 1789, was conveyed in his infancy, and
here, as he informs us in his preface to the _Pioneers_, his first
impressions of the external world were obtained. Here he passed his
childhood, with the vast forest around him, stretching up the mountains
that overlook the lake, and far beyond, in a region where the Indian yet
roamed, and the white hunter, half Indian in his dress and mode of life,
sought his game,--a region in which the bear and the wolf were yet hunted,
and the panther, more formidable than either, lurked in the thickets, and
tales of wanderings in the wilderness, and encounters with these fierce
animals, beguiled the length of the winter nights. Of this place, Cooper,
although early removed from it to pursue his studies, was an occasional
resident throughout his life, and here his last years were wholly passed.

At the age of thirteen he was sent to Yale College, where, notwithstanding
his extreme youth,--for, with the exception of the poet Hillhouse, he was
the youngest of his class, and Hillhouse was afterwards withdrawn,--his
progress in his studies is said to have been honorable to his talents. He
left the college, after a residence of three years, and became a
midshipman in the United States navy. Six years he followed the sea, and
there yet wanders, among those who are fond of literary anecdote, a story
of the young sailor who, in the streets of one of the English ports,
attracted the curiosity of the crowd by explaining to his companions a
Latin motto in some public place. That during this period he made himself
master of the knowledge and the imagery which he