FOOTNOTES:
[M] Farmer's Genealogical Register: Articles Hill-Russell.
"OTSEGO HALL," THE RESIDENCE OF J. FENIMORE COOPER.
In the delightful home which in the above engraving is reflected with equal spirit and fidelity, our great novelist has composed the larger portion of those admirable tales and histories that display his own capacities, and the characteristics and tendencies of our people.
Here also was written the beautiful work by Mr. Cooper's daughter, entitled "Rural Hours." Could any thing tempt to such authorship more strongly than a residence thus quiet, and surrounded with birds, and flowers, and trees, and all the picturesque varieties of land and water which render Cooperstown a paradise to the lover of nature?
In the last International we sketched the career of Mr. Cooper, and gave an account of his writings, and an estimate of their value. What we add here shall relate to the work which entitles his daughter to share his eminence. "Rural Hours" is one of the most charming contributions literature has ever received from the hand of a woman. Though in the simple form of a diary, it is scarcely less than Thomson's "Seasons" a poem; yet while seeming continually to reflect the most poetical phases of nature and of rural life—so delicate is the appreciation of natural beauty, and so pure and unaffected and exquisitely graceful the style of composition—it has throughout even a Flemish truth and particularity of detail. If we were called upon to name a literary performance that is more than any other American in its whole character, we cannot now think of one that would sooner receive this praise. A record of real observations during the daily walks of many years in a secluded town, or of the changes which the seasons brought with their various gifts and forces into domestic experience, it is a series of pictures which could no more have been made in another country than so many paintings on canvas of scenes by Otsego lake. The leaves are blown over by Otsego airs, or if the eye grows heavy and the pages are unturned it is for slumberous spells that attach to delineations of the sunshine and silence of Otsego's August noons. And the views Miss Cooper gives us of the characters and occupations of the agricultural population in that part of the country, who wear curiously interblended the old English and Dutch habits with here and there a sign of the French, and the republican freedom which in three generations has taken the tone of nature, are as distinctive as the descriptions of changes which the maple assumes in the autumn, or of the harvest of Indian corn, or a deer hunt in the snow. Upon a careless reading of "Rural Hours" we might fancy that Miss Cooper was less familiar than perhaps should be for such a task with botany and other sciences, but a closer study of the book reveals the most minute and comprehensive knowledge, so interfused that it is without technical forms only, and never deficient in precision. The style is everywhere not only delightfully free, while artistically finished, but it is remarkably pure, so that there is in the literature of this country not a specimen of more genuine English. In this respect the work of one of the most highly and variously educated women of our time, to whom the languages of the politest nations were through all her youth familiar in their courts, may be well compared with the compositions which "literary ladies" with Phrase Books make half French or half Italian.
GEORGE W. DEWEY.
Of our younger and minor poets no one has more natural grace and tenderness than George W. Dewey. The son of a painter, and himself the Secretary of the Philadelphia Art Union, it may be supposed that he is well instructed in the principles upon which effect depends; but while native genius, as it is called, is of little value without art, no man was ever made a poet by art alone, and it is impossible to read "Blind Louise," "A Memory," or "A Blighted May," without perceiving that Mr. Dewey's commission has both the sign and the countersign, in due form, so that his right to the title of poet is in every respect unquestionable. He has not written much, but whatever he has given to the public is written well, and all his compositions have the signs of a genuineness that never fails to please. There is no collection of his poems, but from the journals to which he contributes we have selected the following specimens: