national or political prejudices, for our opinions of American authors.
Going beyond this topic, he examined and reprehended the habit of applying
to the interpretation of our own constitution maxims derived from the
practice of other governments, particularly that of Great Britain. The
importance of construing that instrument by its own principles, he
illustrated by considering several points in dispute between parties of
the day, on which he gave very decided opinions.

The principal effect of this pamphlet, as it seemed to me, was to awaken
in certain quarters a kind of resentment that a successful writer of
fiction should presume to give lessons in politics. I meddle not here with
the conclusions to which he arrived, though must be allowed to say that
they were stated and argued with great ability. In 1835 Cooper published
_The Monnikins_, a satirical work, partly with a political aim; and in the
same year appeared his _American Democrat_, a view of the civil and social
relations of the United States, discussing more gravely various topics
touched upon in the former work, and pointing out in what respects he
deemed the American people in their practice to have fallen short of the
excellence of their institutions.

He found time, however, for a more genial task--that of giving to the
world his observations on foreign countries. In 1836 appeared his
_Sketches of Switzerland_, a series of letters in four volumes, the second
part published about two months after the first, a delightful work,
written in a more fluent and flexible style than his _Notions of the
Americans_. The first part of _Gleanings in Europe,_ giving an account of
his residence in France, followed in the same year; and the second part of
the same work, containing his observations on England, was published in
April, 1837. In these works, forming a series of eight volumes, he relates
and describes with much of the same distinctness as in his novels; and his