This is the testimony of a man who knew his people and his time in some ways better than any other American novelist and who did not hesitate to use the cautery when he thought its application desirable. Therefore it is to be regarded as just and accurate, the more so that it contains admission of interior facts concerning which "European jealousy and European superciliousness" could find ground for blame that could not be termed carping. It was of that which is now openly and then secretly termed "the middle class" that Cooper was chiefly speaking, however, though most of his words were applicable to all classes of American society. One may doubt the actuality of the "simplicity of American life" in its more prominent expressions at that time, and the "absence of temptation," in the sense in which our author means the phrase, does not appear, since the conditions which made for such temptation in European society were to be found in that of America; but morals were then under the care of the most efficient guardian which they can know,--public opinion. Indeed, in such matters it was rather the day of prudery in America. The American woman was justly proud of her virtue, was indeed something of a catharist; and she would not tolerate the smallest departure from the rigid code which she set as the unimpeachable law in these matters. If she was extreme in this wise, at least the extremity was carried in the right direction; and American society, whatever its follies, was pure. Nor were there wanting many of those in high places to fulfil the statements of Cooper concerning the domesticity of the American wife. In 1824, Mrs. Seaton wrote of Mrs. John C. Calhoun: "You could not fail to love and appreciate, as I do, her charming qualities: a devoted mother, a tender wife, industrious, cheerful, intelligent, with the most perfectly equable temper." Mrs. Crawford, wife of the secretary of war during Monroe's administration, openly regretted that her husband had entered public life, since the duties of the position would make inroads upon the domesticity which she valued as the dearest thing in her existence. On the other hand, these simpler tastes among so many of the higher ladies of the land did not produce lack of culture. John Randolph was no lover of women, and no believer in their entrance into the domain of politics. When on one occasion they crowded the floor as well as the gallery of the Senate to hear him pour forth the rich flood of his eloquence, and he was annoyed by some whisper, he suddenly paused in his speech, pointed his long index finger at the gallery, and demanded: "Mr. Speaker, what, pray, are all these women doing here, so out of place in this arena? Sir, they had much better be at home attending to their knitting!" Yet even John Randolph, misogynist as he was, thus wrote in 1833 t Edward Livingstone concerning the latter's acceptance of the position of minister to France: "In Mrs. Livingstone, to whom present my