intense with new life, and busy after truth, working to some purpose, though without a noise.

When children are lying about, seemingly idle and dull, we, who have become case-hardened by time and satiety, forget that they are all sensation, that their outstretched bodies are drinking in from the common sun and air, that every sound is taken note of by the ear, that every floating shadow and passing form come and touch at the sleepy eye, and that the little circumstances and the material world about them make their best school, and will be the instructors and formers of their characters for life.

And it is delightful to look on and see how busily the whole acts, with its countless parts fitted to each other, and moving in harmony. There are none of us who have stolen softly behind a child when laboring in a sunny corner digging a liliputian well, or fencing in a six-inch barn-yard, and listened to his soliloquies and his dialogues with some imaginary being, without our hearts being touched by it. Nor have we observed the flush which crossed his face when finding himself betrayed, without seeing in it the delicacy and propriety of the after man.

A man may have many vices upon him, and have walked long in a bad course, yet if he has a love for children, and can take pleasure in their talk and play, there is something still left in him to act upon -something which can love simplicity and truth. I have seen one in whom some low vice had become a habit, make himself the plaything of a set of riotous children, with as much delight on his countenance as if nothing but goodness had ever been expressed in it; and have felt as much of kindness and sympathy towards him as I have of revolting towards another who has gone through life with all due propriety, with a cold and supercilious bearing towards children, which makes them shrinking and still. I have known one like the latter attempt to court an open-hearted child, who would draw back with an instinctive aversion; and I have felt as if there were a curse upon him. Better to be driven out from among men than to be disliked of children.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.

James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, N. J., September 15, 1789. His father, Judge William Cooper, became possessed of large tracts of land in the State of New York, on the shores of Lake Otsego, and removed there during the infancy of our author. The prominent position he occupied as a gentleman of wealth, culture, and energy in a new country, is brought to view in the character of Judge Temple, in The Pioneers. Young Cooper was sent to Yale College at the age of thirteen, but he does not appear to have made any figure there, and at the end of his third year he entered the United States navy as a common sailor. After two years' service he was promoted to the rank of midshipman, and eventually to that of lieutenant. Upon his marriage, in 1811, he left the service, and soon after commenced his career as an author.

The novel-reading public had been accustomed to depend wholly upon foreign literature, no works of fiction worth reading had been produced in the United States, except the powerful but intensely disagreeable novels of Charles Brockden Brown. The early home of Cooper had been upon the border of the wilderness; he knew Indians and hunters, and was familiar with all the incidents of frontier life. During his term of naval service he had acquired a thorough knowledge of sailors and of nautical affairs. When a fortunate accident turned his attention to writing, his mind was stored with vivid pictures of the woods and of the scenery of the sea; and he produced in rapid succession a series of fascinating novels, abounding in stirring incidents, and presenting some characters new to the world of fiction. The effect upon the public mind was prodigious; the novels were received with an enthusiasm of which the present generation can have but a faint idea. His works are too numerous to be mentioned in detail; in any one of the last edition, in thirty-two volumes, can be seen a complete list. The most popular sea novels are The Pilot and The Red Rover. The Spy, a tale of the revolutionary war, is his best work, and the one by which he first became known. The tales of frontier life are numerous, and nearly all excellent: The Pioneers, The Deerslayer, The Pathfinder, The Prairie, The Last of the Mohicans, are among the best. There seems to be little falling off in the popularity of Cooper, notwithstanding the advent of the great novelists of later date. His tales have a permanent charm, since they are based upon nature, and are constructed with great skill. In some elements, however, their merit is unequal: his original characters are not numerous, and the same people, under different names, reappear in successive stories as in a masquerade; besides, as Lowell says,

"The women he draws, from one model don't vary;
All sappy as maples, and flat as a prairie."

If Cooper had been content to please his countrymen with his delightful fictions, his life would have been far happier. But he was a man of decided opinions, and had plenty of the talent for criticism, as well as the courage to present his strictures in a blunt way. In Homeward Bound, and Home as Found, and other works, he commented upon blemishes in our national character with so little reserve as to draw upon him a storm of newspaper abuse. He retorted by prosecutions for libel, and at one time had about twenty suits on hand. He generally gained his cases, but the results were barren of honor or profit. His History of the United States Navy also caused a controversy, because it was alleged he had not been quite just in his allotment of praise to the different commanders.

He died at Cooperstown, New York, September 14, 1851.

Cooper was a tall and robust man, very animated in expression, and, though always conscious of his birth and social rank, showed a generous and kindly nature.

The reader must make allowances for the difficulty of giving an adequate idea of his power as a writer by the presentation of detached scenes.

[From The Pilot.]

A CHASE AND BRUSH IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL.

AN involuntary cry of pleasure burst from the lips of Katherine, as she followed his directions, and first beheld the frigate through the medium of the fluctuating colors of the morning. The undulating outlines of the lazy ocean, which rose and fell heavily against the bright boundary of the heavens, was without any relief to distract the eye as it fed eagerly on the beauties of the solitary ship. She was riding sluggishly on the long seas, with only two of her lower and smaller sails spread, to hold her in command; but her tall masts and heavy yards were painted against the fiery sky in strong lines of deep black, while even the smallest cord in the mazes of her rigging might be distinctly traced, stretching from spar to spar with the beautiful accuracy of a picture. At moments, when her huge hull rose on a billow, and was lifted against the background of sky, its shape and dimensions were brought into view; but these transient glimpses were soon lost as it settled into the trough, leaving the waving spars bowing gracefully towards the waters, as if about to follow the vessel into the bosom of the deep. As a clearer light gradually stole on the senses, the delusion of colors and distance vanished together, and when a flood of day preceded the immediate appearance of the sun, the ship became plainly visible within a mile of the cutter, her black hull checkered with ports, and her high, tapering masts exhibiting their proper proportions and hues.

"The fog rises!" cried Griffith; "give us but the wind for an hour, and we shall run her out of gun-shot."

"These ninetys are very fast off the wind," returned the captain, in a low tone, that was intended only for the ears of his first lieutenant and the pilot; "and we shall have a struggle for it."

The quick eye of the stranger was glancing over the movements of his enemy, while he answered,

"He finds we have the heels of him already! he is making ready, and we shall be fortunate to escape a broadside! Let her yaw a little, Mr. Griffith; touch her lightly with the helm; if we are raked, sir, we are lost!"

The captain sprang on the taffrail of his ship with the activity of a younger man, and in an instant he perceived the truth of the other's conjecture.

Both vessels now ran for a few minutes, keenly watching each

other's motions, like two skilful combatants; the English ship making slight deviations from the line of her course, and then, as her movements were anticipated by the other, turning as cautiously in the opposite direction, until a sudden and wide sweep of her huge bows told the Americans plainly on which tack to expect her. Captain Munson made a silent but impressive gesture with his arm, as if the crisis were too important for speech, which indicated to the watchful Griffith the way he wished the frigate sheered, to avoid the weight of the impending danger. Both vessels whirled swiftly up to the wind, with their heads towards the land; and as the huge black side of the three-decker, checkered with its triple batteries, frowned full upon her foe, it belched forth a flood of fire and smoke, accompanied by a bellowing roar, that mocked the surly moanings of the sleeping ocean. The nerves of the bravest man in the frigate contracted their fibres as the hurricane of iron hurtled by them, and each eye appeared to gaze in stupid wonder, as if tracing the flight of the swift engines of destruction. But the voice of Captain Munson was heard in the din, shouting, while he waved his hat earnestly in the required direction, "Meet her! meet her with the helm, boy! meet her, Mr. Griffith, meet her!"

Griffith had so far anticipated this movement as to have already ordered the head of the frigate to be turned in its former course, when, struck by the unearthly cry of the last tones uttered by his commander, he bent his head, and beheld the venerable seaman driven through the air, his hat sull waving, his gray hair floating in the wind, and his eye set in the wild look of death.

The ship which the American frigate had now to oppose, was a vessel of near her own size and equipage; and when Griffith looked at her again, he perceived that she had made her preparations to assert her equality in manful fight.

Her sails had been gradually reduced to the usual quantity, and, by certain movements on her decks, the lieutenant and his constant attendant, the pilot, well understood that she only wanted to lessen her distance a few hundred yards to begin the action.

"Now spread everything," whispered the stranger. Griffith applied the trumpet to his mouth, and shouted, in a voice that was carried even to his enemy, “Let fall out with your booms -sheet home hoist away of everything!

The inspiring cry was answered by a universal bustle. Fifty men flew out on the dizzy heights of the different spars, while broad sheets

of canvas rose as suddenly along the masts, as if some mighty bird were spreading its wings. The Englishman instantly perceived his mistake, and he answered the artifice by a roar of artillery. Griffith watched the effects of the broadside with an absorbing interest as the shot whistled above his head; but when he perceived his masts untouched, and the few unimportant ropes only that were cut, he replied to the uproar with a burst of pleasure.

A few men were, however, seen clinging with wild frenzy to the cordage, dropping from rope to rope, like wounded birds fluttering through a tree, until they fell heavily into the ocean, the sullen ship sweeping by them in a cold indifference. At the next instant the spars and masts of their enemy exhibited a display of men similar to their own, when Griffith again placed the trumpet to his mouth, and shouted aloud, "Give it to them; drive them from their yards, boys; scatter them with your grape; unreeve their rigging!"

The crew of the American wanted but little encouragement to enter on this experiment with hearty good will, and the close of his cheering words was uttered amid the deafening roar of his own cannon. The pilot had, however, mistaken the skill and readiness of their foe; for, notwithstanding the disadvantageous circumstances under which the Englishman increased his sail, the duty was steadily and dexterously performed.

The two ships were now running rapidly on parallel lines, hurling at each other their instruments of destruction with furious industry, and with severe and certain loss to both, though with no manifest advantage in favor of either. Both Griffith and the pilot witnessed with deep concern this unexpected defeat of their hopes; for they could not conceal from themselves that each moment lessened their velocity through the water, as the shot of the enemy stripped the canvas from the yards, or dashed aside the lighter spars in their terrible progress.

"The

"We find our equal here," said Griffith to the stranger. ninety is heaving up again like a mountain; and if we continue to shorten sail at this rate, she will soon be down upon us!"

"You say true, sir," returned the pilot, musing; "the man shows judgment as well as spirit; but

He was interrupted by Merry, who rushed from the forward part of the vessel, his whole face betokening the eagerness of his spirit and the importance of his intelligence.

"The breakers!" he cried, when nigh enough to be heard amid the din; " we are running dead on a ripple, and the sea is white not two hundred yards ahead.”