of his own age to pass for a paler Addison or a more decorous
Sterne. He has far more of the poet than any of the writers of the
eighteenth century, and his moralizing, unlike theirs, is unconscious
and indirect. The same poetical feeling is shown in his biographies;
his subject is invariably chosen for its picturesqueness, and whatever
is unessential to portraiture is thrown into the background. The
result is that his biographies, however deficient in research, bear
the stamp of genuine artistic intelligence, equally remote from
compilation and disquisition. In execution they are almost faultless;
the narrative is easy, the style pellucid, and the writer's judgment
nearly always in accordance with the general verdict of history. They
will not, therefore, be easily superseded, and indeed Irving's
productions are in general impressed with that signet of classical
finish which guarantees the permanency of literary work more surely
than direct utility or even intellectual power. This refinement is the
more admirable for being in great part the reflection of his own moral
nature. Without ostentation or affectation, he was exquisite in all
things, a mirror of loyalty, courtesy, and good taste in all his
literary connections, and exemplary in all the relations of domestic
life which he was called upon to assume. He never married, remaining
true to the memory of an early attachment blighted by death.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER[12]

[Footnote 12: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By PRESIDENT CHARLES F. THWING

(1789-1851)

[Illustration: James Fenimore Cooper.]

In the churchyard of Christ's Church, in the town bearing his name, in
the State of New York, rests all that is mortal of James Fenimore
Cooper. It is now more than two score of years since he died. The spot
is marked by a simple slab of marble. In the public cemetery of
Cooperstown stands a noble monument to Leather Stocking. It is crowned
with a figure of this immortal character. The personality of Cooper
himself must, like the human body, gradually fade away; but certain
personalities which he brought into literature are lasting. Cooper the
man dies; Cooper the novelist lives.

Cooper the man and Cooper the author are singularly united and yet
singularly distinct. His boyhood was spent in scenes which figure in
his novels, and certain of the novels seem in certain respects to be
only the projection of early experiences through which he passed