The earliest examples of fiction in the United States were tentative and lacking in originality. At the close of the eighteenth century, Charles Brockden Brown began the career of the first American novelist with "Wieland." His pecuniary necessities and the slight encouragement offered at that time to American authors made it impossible for him to afford the time and care essential to artistic finish. His novels are of an imaginative and psychological character, often interesting in parts from the intense mental excitement which they describe. They were much admired by the English novelist Godwin, whose works they resemble in intensity of conception and faultiness of execution. A novel called "Charlotte Temple," by Susanna Rowson, obtained a wide circulation in the beginning of the present century, due much more to its foundation on a notorious scandal than to its own literary merit. "Modern Chivalry; or the Adventures of Captain Farrago and Teague O'Reagan, his Servant"--a poor imitation of "Don Quixote"--as a satire directed against the Democratic party by H.H. Brackenridge. R.H. Dana's "Tom Thornton" and "Paul Felton" have little claim to attention beyond the excitement of their rather sensational stories. But with the publication of "The Spy," Cooper opened a thoroughly national vein, and began a literary career which showed how little native genius need rely on foreign influence or on foreign subjects. He described the stirring events and the moral heroism of the American Revolution with patriotic sympathy and original literary power. He touched the romantic chords of that great struggle with a delicacy which met with a world-wide response. Not only did Americans feel that in Cooper's novels the picturesque and characteristic features of their country were delineated by a master-hand, but in almost every European land, translations of "The Spy," "The Pioneers," or "The Pathfinder," testified to the universal interest excited by the examples of simplicity, endurance, and sagacity which formed the subjects of Cooper's pen. In "The Pioneers," "The Last of the Mohicans," "The Prairie," "The Pathfinder," and "The Deer-slayer" figures the character of Leatherstocking, than whom no fictitious personage has a greater claim to interest. His bravery, resolution, and woodland skill make him a type of the hardy race who pushed westward the reign of civilization. The scenes among which he lived, the primeval forest, the great inland lakes, the hunter's camp, and Indian wigwam were described by Cooper with a fidelity and picturesqueness which will always give to his works a national value. Now that farms and manufacturing towns cover what a century ago was a trackless wilderness, where backwoodsmen and Indians shot bear and deer, it would be almost impossible for us to realize the previous condition of our now populous country were it not for the novels of Cooper. And this great writer not only described the wild