Rev. R. W. Griswold.
From John P. Kennedy.
Baltimore, October, 1851.
Dear Sir:—Your invitation reached me too late to enable me to participate in the meeting which has just been held at the City Hall in your city, to render appropriate honors to the memory of Mr. Cooper.
I rejoice to see what has been done and what you propose to do. It is due to the eminent merits of Fenimore Cooper, that there should be an impressive public recognition of the loss which our country has sustained in his death. He stood confessedly at the head of a most attractive and popular department of our literature, in which his extraordinary success had raised him up a fame that became national. The country claimed it as its own. This fame was acknowledged and appreciated not only wherever the English tongue is the medium of thought, but every where amongst the most civilized nations of Europe.
Our literature, in the lifetime of the present generation, has grown to a maturity which has given it a distinction and honorable place in that aggregate which forms national character. No man has done more in his sphere to elevate and dignify that character than Fenimore Cooper: no man is more worthy than he, for such services, of the highest honors appropriate to a literary benefactor. His genius has contributed a rich fund to the instruction and delight of his countrymen, which will long be preserved amongst the choicest treasures of American letters, and will equally induce to render our national literature attractive to other nations. We owe a memorial and a monument to the man who has achieved this. This work is the peculiar privilege of the distinguished scholars of New-York, and I have no doubt will be warmly applauded, and if need be, assisted, by every scholar and friend of letters in the Union.
With the best wishes for the success of this enterprise, I am, my dear sir, very truly yours,
JOHN P. KENNEDY.
Rev. Rufus W. Griswold.