Under such conditions Peter Parley was born, and reborn, and overborn; battles were waged for and against him, just as they have only recently been waged for and against the Elsie books. But no sooner was Peter Parley identified with a definite person than Mr. Goodrich’s trials began. He became a victim of the imperfect copyright system; he found his tales being pirated in England. And as fast as he would settle one difficulty, another would arise; spurious Parleys came to light, conflicting with his sales. It was the case of Goodrich _alias_ Kettell, _alias_ Mogridge, _alias_ Martin, and many more beside. In fact, a writer, considering the life of William Martin (1801–1867), quotes a statement to the effect that “Messrs. Darton, Martin’s publishers, in especial used to prefix the name [Peter Parley] to all sorts of children’s books, without reference to their actual authorship.” Isaiah Thomas may be taken as representative of our Revolutionary period, even as the “New England Primer” may typify the chief literary product of our Colonial life. Peter Parley marks for us the war of 1812. It was after this that our country began to expand, that the South and the Southwest unfolded their possibilities, that the East began the Westward move that led to the craze of ’49. The Indian, the scout, the cowboy, the Yankee trader have been the original contributions of America to juvenile literature. A close study will indicate that Cooper was the creator of this _genre_ of story,--more painstaking, more effulgent, more detailed than the Indian story-writer of to-day, but none the less a permanent model. So, too, he will be found, in his accounts of the navy, in his records of common seamen, in his lives of naval officers, to be no mean, no inaccurate, no dry historian; in fact, Cooper, as one of our first naval critics, has yet to be accorded his proper estimate.