she once carried him to Newport, with which he was greatly pleased.  He explored the old ruin there, but no fancy could ever persuade him to see more than a windmill in it; but the charm of Newport’s situation, harbor, and shore lines lingered in his mind and served him for the opening and closing scenes of this work.  After its publication he received from some Newport gentlemen the gift of a little box made from the keel of the Endeavor, Cook’s famous exploring ship, which wound up its world-circling voyage in Newport harbor.  On the lid of the box was a silver-plate engraving.  In Cooper’s story the “Red Rover” appears on this Newport scene in the height of his career,—­an outlaw in spirit, a corsair in deed.  In early life he was of quick mind, strong will, with culture and social position, but wildly passionate and wayward; and smarting under official injustice, in an evil hour he casts his lawlessness loose on the storm-tide of life.  The voice of an elder sister, who had given something of a mother’s deep love and tenderness to the wayward youth, falls upon his ear.  Old memories are awakened; home feeling revives; conscience is aroused, and in the very hour of its greatest triumph the proud spirit bows in penitence,—­the Rover surrenders his captives.  A like change of heart came, through a mutual love of the birds of heaven, to a real pirate who chanced upon a cabin in the forest’s solitude and here confessed his life to its inmate, Audubon, who left this “striking incident” a record in his works.  However, “Dick Fid, that arrant old foretop man, and his comrade, Negro Sip, are the true lovers of the narrative;—­the last, indeed, is a noble creature, a hero under the skin of Congo.”  “The Red Rover” is all a book of the sea.  In Sir Walter Scott’s journal, January, 1828, appears:  “I have read Cooper’s new novel, ‘The Red Rover.’  The current of it rolls entirely on the ocean.  Something too much of nautical language.  It is very clever, though.”  Its author “has often been idly compared to the author of ‘Waverley,’ but to no such heritage as Scott’s was ever Cooper born.  Alone he penetrated the literary wilderness, blazing paths for those who should come after him there";—­and a Columbus of letters for others to follow on the sea’s highway was he.

[Illustration:  THE NEWPORT BOX.]

[Illustration:  JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART.]

A misprint in Lockhart’s “Life of Scott” made his comment on Cooper most unfortunate by an “s” added to the word manner.  Sir Walter’s journal reads:  “This man who has shown so much genius has a good deal of manner, or want of manner, peculiar to his countrymen.”  Cooper, hurt to the quick for himself and his country at being rated “a rude boor from the bookless wilds,” by one he had called his “sovereign” in past cordial relations, resented this expression in his review of Lockhart’s work for the Knickerbocker Magazine, 1838, and for so doing he was harshly criticised in England.  October, 1864, the literary