PUBLIC HONORS TO THE MEMORY OF MR. COOPER.
In the last number of the International we were able merely to announce the death of our great countryman Mr. Cooper. The following account of proceedings in reference to the event is compiled mainly from the Evening Post.
A meeting of literary men, and others, was held at the City Hall in New-York, on the 25th of September, for the purpose of taking the necessary measures for rendering fit honors to the memory of the deceased author. Rufus W. Griswold, calling the meeting to order, said it had been convened to do justice to the memory of the most illustrious American who had died in the present century. Since the design of such a meeting had first been formed, a consultation among Mr. Cooper's friends had been held, and it had been determined that the present should be only a preparatory meeting, for the making of such arrangements as should be thought necessary for a more suitable demonstration of respect for that eminent person, whose name, more completely than that of any of his cotemporaries and countrymen, had filled the world.
On motion of Judge Duer, Washington Irving was elected President of the meeting. On motion of Joseph Blunt, Fitz Greene Halleck and Rufus W. Griswold were appointed Secretaries.
Mr. Blunt said, that as it had been thought proper to consider this occasion as merely preliminary, and for the purpose of making arrangements to do honor to the distinguished author who has left us, he would move that a committee of five be appointed by the chair, to report what measures should be adopted, by the literary gentlemen of this city and of the country, so far as they may see fit to join them, for the purpose of rendering appropriate honors to the memory of the late J. Fenimore Cooper.
The motion was adopted, and the chair appointed the following gentlemen members of the committee: Judge Duer, Richard B. Kimball, Dr. Francis, Fitz Greene Halleck, and George Bancroft; to whom Washington Irving and Rufus W. Griswold were subsequently added. The meeting then adjourned.
This committee afterwards met and appointed as a General Committee to carry out the designs of the meeting: Washington Irving, James K. Paulding, John W. Francis, Gulian C. Verplanck, Charles King, Richard B. Kimball, Rufus W. Griswold, Lewis Gaylord Clarke, Francis L. Hawks, John A. Dix, George Bancroft, Fitz Greene Halleck, John Duer, William C. Bryant, George P. Morris, Charles Anthon, Samuel Osgood, J. M. Wainright, and William W. Campbell.
R. W. Griswold, Donald G. Mitchell, Parke Godwin, C. F. Briggs, and Starbuck Mayo were appointed a Committee of Correspondence.
Besides letters from many of the gentlemen present, others had been received from some twenty of the most eminent literary men of the United States, all expressing the warmest sympathy in the proposal to do every possible honor to the memory of Mr. Cooper. We copy from these the following:
From Washington Irving.