[9] There may have been more than a mere sentimental regret in his mind at that time; for his inventive intuition had struck out half a century before an idea to which the slow thought of his fellows had not yet attained,--the plan of utilizing roofs for the purpose of giving to all classes an ownership of free air and far distance and boundless sky as complete as any landowner could command by fencing off a mountain for his own pleasure. As he looked down upon the vast wilderness of roofs and thought of the multitude laboring beneath them or trudging through the streets ("up one canyon and down another," as old Jim Bridger the scout said in St. Louis), ignorant of the upper sphere within reach, he might well have felt that one part of his original scheme would still be a physical and moral boon to the metropolis. In fact the disappearance of the "vacant lots," so numerous in his youth, and so freely available as informal parks and playgrounds, had created new necessity for air and space. Whether he consciously recalled the hanging gardens of Babylon, or the flat roofs universally utilized for social and domestic purposes in eastern and southern countries, I do not know. At all events he had seized upon a similar idea, and now--nearly a score of years after his death--we are waking up to its value. Even the Cooper Union building some day, after more pressing needs of equipment shall have been satisfied, may be crowned with its garden of rest and outlook. [10] Of the original board, Peter Cooper was the first to pass away. Mr. Hunt and Mr. Tiemann have since died, and Mr. R. Fulton Cutting has been elected a trustee. The other vacancies have not been filled. VIII NATIONAL POLITICS PETER COOPER'S prominent activity in national politics belongs to two periods,--that of the war for the Union, and that of the subsequent controversies over questions of financial policy. As has been explained, he felt his life to be peculiarly identified with that of the nation born with him; and the idea that this nation should be destroyed in the midst of its triumphant progress was profoundly abhorrent to him. Like many other patriots, he was ready to save the Union by a compromise, if that were practicable. He advocated the purchase and liberation by the government of all the slaves in the United States; he promoted a "peace conference" on the very eve of the war. But when South Carolina had formally seceded and the gauntlet had been cast at the feet of national authority, his course was not uncertain. He was a representative of the New York Chamber of Commerce in the deputation of thirty leading citizens of New York which visited Washington in order to discover what plan Mr. Buchanan (then still President) had in view. They got no satisfaction from the President, but assured themselves of the firm loyalty of Mr. Seward, then Senator from New York.