rmness, gave him such medical counsels as the malady appeared to
require, prepared him delicately for its fatal termination, and returned
to New York with the most melancholy anticipations. In a few days
afterwards, Cooper expired, amid the deep affliction of his family, on the
14th of September, the day before that on which he should have completed
his sixty-second year. He died, apparently without pain, in peace and
religious hope. The relations of man to his Maker, and to that state of
being for which the present is but a preparation, had occupied much of his
thoughts during his whole lifetime, and he crossed, with a serene
composure, the mysterious boundary which divides this life from the next.

The departure of such a man, in the full strength of his faculties,--on
whom the country had for thirty years looked as one of the permanent
ornaments of its literature, and whose name had been so often associated
with praise, with renown, with controversy, with blame, but never with
death,--diffused a universal awe. It was as if an earthquake had shaken
the ground on which we stood, and showed the grave opening by our path. In
the general grief for his loss, his virtues only were remembered; and his
failings forgotten.

Of his failings I have said little; such as he had were obvious to all the
world; they lay on the surface of his character; those who knew him least
made the most account of them. With a character so made up of positive
qualities--a character so independent and uncompromising, and with a
sensitiveness far more acute than he was willing to acknowledge, it is not
surprising that occasions frequently arose to bring him, sometimes into
friendly collision, and sometimes in to graver disagreements and
misunderstandings with his fellow-men. For his infirmities, his friends
found an ample counterpoise in the generous sincerity of his nature. He
never thought of disguising his opinions, and he abhorred all disguise in
others; he did not even deign to use that show of regard towards those of
whom he did not think well, which the world tolerates, and almost demands.
A manly expression of opinion, however different from his own, commanded
his respect. Of his own works, he spoke with the same freedom as of the
works of others; and never hesitated to express his judgment of a book for
the reason that it was written by himself: yet he could bear with
gentleness any dissent from the estimate lie placed on his own writings.