kept up in later years friendly personal relations and occasional correspondence.

It had been a misfortune for the future author to lose the severe if somewhat wooden drill of his preparatory instructor. It was an additional misfortune to lose the education, scanty and defective as it then was, which was imparted by the college. It might not and probably would not have contributed anything to Cooper's intellectual development in the way of accuracy of thought or of statement. It would not in all probability have added materially to his stock of knowledge. But with all its inefficiency and inadequacy, it would very certainly have had the effect of teaching him to aim far more than he did at perfection of form. He possibly gained more than he lost by being transferred at so early an age to other scenes. But the lack of certain qualities in his writings, which educated men are perhaps the only ones to notice, can be traced pretty directly to this lack of preliminary intellectual drill.

His academical career having been thus suddenly cut short, he entered in a little while upon one better suited to his adventurous nature. Boys are sent to sea, he tells us in one of his later novels, for the cure of their ethical ailings. This renovating influence of ocean life he had at any rate a speedy opportunity to try. It was decided that he should enter the navy. The position of his father, who had been for several years a representative in Congress, and was a leading member of the Federalist party, naturally held out assurances that the son would receive all the advancement to which he would be legitimately entitled. At that time no naval school existed. It was the custom, in consequence, for boys purposing to fit themselves for the position of officers to serve a sort of apprenticeship in the merchant marine. Accordingly in the autumn of 1806, Cooper was placed on board a vessel that was to sail from the port of New York with a freight of flour to Cowes and a market. The ship was named the Sterling, and was commanded by Captain John Johnston, of Wiscasset, Maine, who was also part owner. Cooper's position and prospects were well known; but he was employed regularly before the mast and was never admitted to the cabin. The vessel cleared from the port of New York on the 16th of October. The passage was a long and stormy one; forty days went by before land was seen after it had once been left behind. The ship reached the other side just at the time when the British Channel was alive with vessels of war in consequence of one of the periodical anticipations of invasions from France. It went to London, and stayed for some time there discharging its cargo and taking in new. Cooper embraced the opportunity to see all the sights he could of the great metropolis. "He had a rum time of it in his sailor rig," said afterward one of his shipmates, "but hoisted in a wonderful deal of gibberish, according to his own account of the cruise."

The Sterling sailed with freight in January, 1807, for the Straits of Gibraltar. It took on board a cargo of barilla at Aguilas and Almeria, and returned to England, reaching the Thames in May. Both going and coming the voyage was a stormy one, and during it several of the incidents occurred that Cooper worked up afterward into powerful passages in his sea novels. In London the vessel lay several weeks, discharging its cargo and taking in more, which this time consisted of dry goods. Towards the end of July, it left London for America, and reached Philadelphia on the 18th of September, after another long and stormy passage of fifty-two days.

This was Cooper's introduction to sea life. During the year he had spent in the merchant vessel he had seen a good deal of hard service. His preparatory studies having been completed after a fashion, he now regularly entered the navy. His commission as midshipman bears date the 1st of January, 1808. On the 24th of the following February he was ordered to report to the commanding naval officer at New York. But the records of the government give little information as to the duties to which he was assigned during the years he remained in its service. The knowledge we have of his movements comes mainly from what he himself incidentally discloses in published works or letters of a later period. The facts we learn from all sources together, are but few. He served for a while on board the Vesuvius in 1808. During that year it seemed as if the United States and Great Britain were about to drift into war. Preparations of various kinds were made; and one of the things ordered was the dispatch to Lake Ontario of a party, of which Cooper was one, under the command of Lieutenant Woolsey. The intention was to build a brig of sixteen guns to command that inland water; and the port of Oswego, then a mere hamlet of some twenty houses, was the place selected for its construction. Around it lay a wilderness, thirty or forty miles in depth. Here the party spent the following winter, and during it the Oneida, as the brig was called, was finished. Early in the spring of 1809 it was launched. By that time, however, the war-cloud had blown over, and the vessel was not then used for the purpose for which it had been constructed. More permanent results, however, were accomplished than the building of a ship. The knowledge and experience which Cooper then gained was something beyond and above what belonged to his profession. It is to his residence on the shores of that inland sea that we owe the vivid picture drawn of Lake Ontario in "The Pathfinder" and of the wilderness which then surrounded it on every side.

After the completion of the Oneida, Cooper accompanied Lieutenant Woolsey on a visit to Niagara Falls. The navy records show that on the 10th of June, 1809, he was left by his commander in charge of the gunboats on Lake Champlain. They further reveal the fact that on the 27th of September of this same year he was granted a furlough to make a European voyage. This project for some reason was given up, as on the 13th of November, 1809, he was ordered to the Wasp, then under the command of Lawrence, who afterwards fell in the engagement between the Shannon and the Chesapeake. To this officer, like himself a native of Burlington, he was very warmly attached. The next notice of him contained in the official records is to the effect that on the 9th of May, 1810, permission was granted him to go on furlough for twelve months. Whether he availed himself of it is not known. An event soon occurred, however, that put an end to his naval career as effectively as one had previously been put to his collegiate. An attachment had sprung up some time before between him and a Miss DeLancey. On the 1st of January, 1811, the couple were married at Mamaroneck, Westchester County, New York. Cooper was then a little more than twenty-one years old; the bride lacked very little of being nineteen.

His wife belonged to a Huguenot family, which towards the end of the seventeenth century had fled from France, and had finally settled in Westchester. During the Revolutionary War the DeLanceys had taken the side of the crown against the colonies. Several of them held positions in the British army. John Peter DeLancey, whose daughter Cooper had married, had been himself a captain in that service. After the recognition of American independence he went to England, but, having resigned his commission, returned in 1789 to this country, and spent the remainder of his life at his home in Mamaroneck. The fact that his kinsmen by marriage had belonged to the defeated party in the Revolutionary struggle led Cooper in his writings to treat the Tories, as they were called, with a fairness and generosity which in that day few were disposed to show, at least in print. This tenderness is plainly to be seen