JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.

THE family of this distinguished author is one of the oldest in the United States. William Cooper arrived in this country in 1679, and settled at Burlington, New Jersey. He immediately took an active part in public affairs, as his name appears in the list of members of the colonial legislature for 1681. In 1687 he obtained a grant of land opposite the then new city of Philadelphia, extending several miles along the margin of the Delaware, and the tributary stream which has ever since borne the name of Cooper's Creek. The branch of the family to which the novelist belonged removed, more than a century since, into Pennsylvania, where his father was born. That gentleman married, early in life, a lady of a family which emigrated from Sweden at the first settlement of Delaware. He established himself in a hamlet of Burlington county, which continues to be called by his name, and afterwards in the city of Burlington. Having obtained extensive tracts of land on the border of Otsego Lake, in central New York, he commenced the settlement of his estate there in 1785, and in the following spring erected the first house in Cooperstown. From this time until 1790, Judge Cooper resided alternately at Cooperstown and Burlington, maintaining an establishment at each place.

JAMES FENIMORE was born at Burlington, Sept. 15, 1789, and in the following year was removed to the new home of his family in New York, of which he afterwards became the proprietor, and where he died. His father being a member of the congress, which then held its sessions in Philadelphia, the family spent much time at Burlington, where our author, when but six years of age, commenced, under a private tutor of some eminence, his classical education. When eleven years old, he became an inmate of the family of the Rev. Thomas Ellison, Rector of St. Peter's, in Albany, who had prepared three of

plished teacher, JAMES was sent to New Haven, where he completed his preparatory studies. At the beginning of the second term of 1802 he entered Yale College; here he had among his classmates John A. Collier, Judge Cushman, Justice Sutherland, Judge Bissel, Colonel James Gadsden, and several others, who afterwards became eminent in various professions. In 1805 he left the college, where he had maintained a highly respectable position; in the ancient languages, particularly, he had no superior in his class.

Having obtained a midshipman's warrant, COOPER, at sixteen, entered the navy. His noble, frank and generous disposition, here made him a favorite, and admirably fitted him for the service, in which unquestionably he would have obtained the highest honors, had he not finally made choice of the easy and quiet life of a country gentleman. After six years not unprofitably spent on the ocean, as they gave him that knowledge of maritime affairs which enabled him subsequently almost without an effort, to place himself at the head of all writers on the sea, he resigned his office. On January 1, 1811, he was married to Miss De Lancey, sister to the bishop of Western New York of that name, and a member of one of the oldest and most influential families in the United States.

Not long after this, he began to exercise his talents in the way of literary productions, not only in the lighter department of novels, but in essays on philosophical subjects, and if in them the imagination was less shown, they certainly indicated quite as much of vigorous thought and manly style as anything which afterwards appeared from his pen. His first popular work was published with the title of "Precaution;" it was commenced under circumstances purely accidental, and issued under great disadvantages. Apparently expecting that prejudices might exist against such a work, he assumed a foreign guise, and laid its scene in England; it contained a full proportion of noble lords and titled dames, and was highly palatable to its readers, who began, however, to suspect from its intimate acquaintance with that country, whether its alleged author could have written it. It was republished in London, and passed for an English novel; its author deriving from it more credit for European knowledge, than he afterwards did for his work on England, written after many years' residence in Europe. But inasmuch as it contained no fashionable slang, misplaced sentimentality, incoherent rhapsodies, nor libels on distinguished persons, -as it was noticed in no English Review, and the secret of its authorship having transpired, it was descending to oblivion, when his "Spy," "Pioneers," "Pilot," &c., appeared