When the plan he had conceived was given up, this addition naturally disappeared with it. Nothing that industry could do was spared by Cooper to make this work a success. On this account as well as for its reception by the public it stands in marked contrast to "The Spy." In the preparation of it he studied historical authorities, he read state papers, he pored over official documents of all kinds and degrees of dreariness. To have his slightest assertions in accordance with fact, he examined almanacs, and searched for all the contemporary reports as to the condition of the weather. He visited Boston in order to go over in person the ground he was to make the scene of his story. As a result of all this labor he has furnished us an admirable description of the engagement at Concord Bridge, of the running fight of Lexington, (p. 050) and of the battle of Bunker's Hill. Of the last, it is, according to the sufficient authority of Bancroft, the best account ever given. At this point praise must stop. New England was always to Cooper an ungenial clime, both as regards his creative activity and his critical appreciation. The moment he touched its soil, his strength seemed to abandon him. Whatever excellencies this particular work displayed, they were not the excellencies of a novel. Accuracy of detail, even in historical romance, is only a minor virtue. The modern reader is, indeed, often inclined to doubt whether it is a virtue at all now that modern research is constantly showing that so much we have been wont to look upon as fact is nothing more than fable. So superior is the imagination of man turning out to his memory that one is tempted to fancy that instead of going to history for our fiction we shall yet have to turn about and go to fiction for our history.