James Fenimore Cooper, the first American who gave to American literature a name in other nations, and the most illustrious of the authors of his country, died at Otsego Hall, his residence in Cooperstown, on Sunday, the fourteenth of September, aged sixty-two years. Of his literary life and character we have recently written at large in these pages; of his noble personal qualities, which entitled him to no less eminence in society, we shall have occasion to speak hereafter.
Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet, LL, D., the pioneer of Deaf-Mute Instruction in this country, died in Hartford, Connecticut, the 10th of September, at the age of sixty-four. At an early period of his life, Mr. Gallaudet became interested in the Deaf and Dumb. In the autumn of 1807, a child of Dr. Mason F. Cogswell, of Hartford, through a malignant fever, lost her hearing and soon after her speech. Mr. Gallaudet interested himself in the case of this child, and attempted to converse with and instruct her. His efforts was rewarded with partial success; and through the exertions of Dr. Cogswell, he was commissioned to visit Europe for the purpose of becoming a teacher of the Deaf and Dumb in this country. Seven gentlemen of Hartford subscribed sufficient funds to defray his expenses, and he departed on the 25th of May, 1815. Meanwhile, the friends of the project employed the interval in procuring an incorporation from the Legislature, in May, 1816. In May, 1819, the name of "the American Asylum at Hartford for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb," was bestowed on the first Institution for Deaf-Mutes established in this country. After spending several months in assiduous prosecution of his studies, under the Abbe Sicard and others, Mr. Gallaudet returned in August, 1816, accompanied by Mr. Laurent Clerc, a deaf and dumb professor of the Institution at Paris, well known in Europe as a most intelligent pupil of Sicard. Mr. Clerc is now living in a vigorous old age and is still a teacher at Hartford. The Asylum was opened on the 15th of April, 1817, and during the first week of its existence received seven pupils; it now averages 220 annually. Mr. Gallaudet became the Principal at its commencement, and held the office until April, 1830, when he resigned, and he has since officiated as Chaplain of the Retreat for the Insane at Hartford. His interest in the cause of the Deaf-Mute Education has continued unabated, and his memory will be warmly cherished by that unfortunate class, as well as by a large class of devoted friends. His last act in connection with the great cause to which all his best energies had been devoted, was the dictation of the following letter to his son, Mr. Gallaudet of the New-York Institute, who presented it to the recent Convention at Hartford:
Hartford, Aug. 29, 1851.
To the President, Officers and Members of the Convention of those interested in the Cause of Instruction of Deaf-Mutes, vote in session in this City—
Gentlemen: With deep regret I perceive that the state of my health is such as to prevent my enjoying the pleasures and the privileges of participating with you in the objects of the Convention. Look to God for His wisdom and peace, and may it be richly imparted to you. Accept the assurances of my personal regard and best wishes for your success in your various operations.
Yours sincerely, T. H. Gallaudet.
M. Beverley Tucker, the half-brother of John Randolph, died on the 26th of August, of a chronic affection, at Winchester, in Virginia. He was one of the last of a generation and family, every member of which was remarkable for high and peculiar endowment. The subject of our notice was not inferior to the kinsman whose fame was so peculiar, in all the essentials of a high character and an exquisite genius. His writings, like the speeches of John Randolph, were distinguished by freedom, grace, wonderful raciness and spirit, and remarkable eloquence and point. He was the author of a series of lectures on Government—that of the United States in particular. He was a politician of the States Rights School, unbending and unyielding in his faith and tenacious of its minutest points. These lectures cannot be too carefully studied, especially by the young men of the north, as they embody the doctrines of Virginia and the South generally, and exhibit the extent of the political requisition of that great section of our country. They are beautifully written—are, in short, among the best specimens of political writing which we possess. Judge Tucker (he was sometime on the Bench in Missouri) was the author of many other works which deserve to be better known. His province was fiction as well as politics, and he wrote poetry with singular vigor. He was the translator of Goethe's Iphigenia, which was published in the Southern Literary Messenger, and has left among other manuscripts, an original drama, entitled "Viola," written in blank verse. His novel of "George Balcombe," will be remembered by many readers, as a prose fiction at once highly interesting and well written. His "Partisan Leader," another prose fiction in two volumes, is a political romance, embodying the Southern hostility to Mr. Van Buren's administration, and "illustrating the tendencies of his party to a general usurpation of all the attributes of sovereign power." His latest production, we believe, is a scattering criticism in the July issue of the Southern Quarterly Review, of Garland's life of John Randolph, a work which he bitterly denounced. Like his half-brother, the orator of Roanoke, Judge Tucker, was a person of intense feelings and great excitability, an eager impulse, and a keen power of sarcasm. He wrote with all the eloquence with which the latter spoke. His style is marked by great ease and freedom, by felicities of expression which give an epigrammatic point to his sentences, and by a sweetness and harmony of arrangement, which bestow music upon the ear without falling into monotony. His thought was equally free and melodious. He thought deeply and earnestly, and was never satisfied with the shallows of thought. In diving, he was no less clear than deep; he brought up pearls where the awkward diver brings up mud only. Judge Tucker was a fine man; of warm passions, but noble nature; of powers of satire, but of benevolent heart. He was probably sixty-eight years old when he died. He has left a wife and several children. We must not omit to mention that at the time of his death he held the chair of Law in the College of William and Mary, at Williamsburg, Va. Judge Tucker's last appearance in affairs was as a member of the Nashville Convention.