the public; it had
lost the supreme hold which for twenty years it had maintained. The
mighty master was dead; to some extent his influence had died before
him. The later work he did, had in several instances detracted from,
rather than added to the fame he had won by the earlier. Cooper's own
ventures in the field of foreign fiction, whatever their absolute merit,
could not be compared with those in which he had drawn the life of the
ocean, or the streams and forests of his native land. But outside of any
effect produced by poorer production, there could be no doubt of the
fact of a change in the public taste. The hero of action had gone by. In
his place had come the hero of observation and reflection, who did not
do great things, but who said good things. The exquisite and the
sentimentalist were the fashion, to be speedily followed, according to
the law of reaction, by the boor and the satirist. At the time when
Cooper returned from Europe, Bulwer was the popular favorite. Both in
England and America he was styled the prince of living novelists; and
nowhere was enthusiasm, in his behalf, crazier than in this country. The
revolution in taste, moreover, worked directly in his favor in more ways
than one. Scott and Cooper's heroes, whether intelligent or not, were
invariably moral. But of this sort of men readers were tired. No (p. 125)
character could please highly the popular palate in which there was
not a distinct flavor of iniquity. More ability and less morality was
the opinion generally entertained, though probably not often expressed.
Hence it was not unnatural that the sentimental dandies and high-toned
villains of Bulwer's earlier novels should have been the heroes to
captivate all hearts.

The comparatively low estimate into which the novel of adventure had
sunk, undoubtedly had a marked effect upon Cooper's reputation. Some of
his later work is superior to his earlier from the artistic point of
view. Yet it was never received with the same praise, at least in
English-speaking countries. More than that, the criticism it received
was often excessively depreciatory; nor was this all due to personal
unpopularity, though a good deal of it certainly was. He simply wrote in
a style which the age had temporarily left behind, and fancied it had
outgrown. All that Cooper had to do, all that under any circumstances he
could do, was to keep on producing the best that lay in his power; sure
to find a certain body of re