ractice to have fallen short of the
excellence of their institutions.

He found time, however, for a more genial task--that of giving to the
world his observations on foreign countries. In 1836 appeared his
_Sketches of Switzerland_, a series of letters in four volumes, the second
part published about two months after the first, a delightful work,
written in a more fluent and flexible style than his _Notions of the
Americans_. The first part of _Gleanings in Europe,_ giving an account of
his residence in France, followed in the same year; and the second part of
the same work, containing his observations on England, was published in
April, 1837. In these works, forming a series of eight volumes, he relates
and describes with much of the same distinctness as in his novels; and his
remarks on the manners and institutions of the different countries, often
sagacious, and always peculiarly his own, derive, from their frequent
reference to contemporary events, an historical interest.

In 1838 appeared _Homeward Bound_ and _Home as Found_, two satirical
novels, in which Cooper held up to ridicule a certain class of conductors
of the newspaper press in America. These works had not the good fortune to
become popular. Cooper did not, and, because he was too deeply in earnest,
perhaps would not, infuse into his satirical works that gaiety without
which satire becomes wearisome. I believe, however, that if they had been
written by anybody else they would have met with more favor; but the world
knew that Cooper was able to give them something better, and would not be
satisfied with anything short of his best, Some childishly imagined that
because, in the two works I have just mentioned, a newspaper editor is
introduced, in whose character almost every possible vice of his
profession is made to find a place, Cooper intended an indiscriminate
attack upon the whole body of writers for the newspaper press, forgetting
that such a portraiture was a satire only on those to whom it bore a
likeness We have become less sensitive and more reasonable of late, and
the monthly periodicals make sport for their readers of the follies and
ignorance of the newspaper editors, without awakening the slightest
resentment; but Cooper led the way in this sort of discipline, and I
remember some instances of towering indignation at his audacity expressed
in the journals of that time.

The next year Cooper made his appearance before the public in a new
depar