brought up. The very name of the Reverend Meek Wolf which he bestowed in this story upon his clergyman, revealed of itself the existence of feelings which put him at once out of that pale of sympathetic thought, which enables the novelist or historian to look with the insight of the spirit upon men and motives which his intellect acting by itself would prompt him to distrust and dislike. To this tale succeeded "The Water Witch." This was begun at Sorrento and finished at Rome, a city which he subsequently used often to speak of as the precise moral antipodes of the capital of the New World, in the harbor of which he had laid much of the scene of this story. It (p. 076) was not till he reached Dresden, however, that he was enabled to have it put in print. On the 11th of December, 1830, it made its appearance in this country. With it ended for a time his fictions that dealt with American life and manners. He now turned to new fields and wrote with different aims. * * * * * During all these years his popularity had continued unabated, though his last two novels could hardly be said to have met with the favor which had been accorded to most of those which had preceded them. It is certainly a convincing proof of the wide reputation he had gained before he went to Europe, that five editions of "The Prairie," the first work he wrote after his arrival, were arranged to be published at the same time. Two were to come out in Paris, one in French and one in English; one in London; one in Berlin; and one in Philadelphia. But even this success was soon surpassed. It is hard to credit the accounts that are given on unimpeachable testimony. One statement, however, is too important to be overlooked, coming from the source it does. In the controversy going on in this country in 1833, in regard to the part Cooper had taken in the finance discussion, which will be mentioned in its proper place, Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, published a letter in defense of his absent friend. In it he bore witness in the following words to the popularity of the novelist in the Old World: "I have visited, in Europe, many countries," said he, "and what I have asserted of the fame of Mr. Cooper I assert from personal knowledge. In every city of Europe that I visited the works of Cooper were conspicuously placed in the windows of every bookshop. They (p. 077) are published as soon as he produces them in thirty-four different places in Europe. They have been seen by American travelers in the languages of Turkey and Persia, in Constantinople, in Egypt, at Jerusalem, at Ispahan." CHAPTER V. (p. 078) 1830.