story. One may almost
be said at times to feel the cold, the desolation, the darkness, and the
gloom of an Antarctic winter confronting and overshadowing the spirit.
But there can be little that is more tedious than the dry chaff of
theological discussion which is here threshed for us over and over
again. Believers in the Trinity had as little reason as believers in
Episcopacy to rejoice in Cooper's advocacy of their faith. There (p. 260)
was nothing original in his views; there was nothing pointed or
forcible in his statement of them. He meant to inculcate a lesson, and
the only lesson that can possibly be drawn is the sufficiently absurd
one that dwellers in the chilly spiritual clime of Unitarianism can be
cured of their faith in that icy creed by being subjected to the horrors
of a polar winter. Far more clearly does the novel show the falling-off
in his artistic conceptions and the narrowing process his opinions were
undergoing. At the rate this latter was taking place it seems probable
that had he lived to write another novel on a theme similar to this, his
hero would have been compelled to abandon his belief in Presbyterianism,
Congregationalism, Methodism, or some other ism before he would be found
worthy of being joined in the marriage relation to his Episcopalian
bride.

The "Ways of the Hour" was the last work that Cooper published.
Everything he now wrote was written with a special object. The design of
this was to attack trial by jury; but he was not prevented by that fact
from discussing several other matters that were uppermost in his mind.
The incidents of the story utterly destroyed the effectiveness of the
lesson that it was intended to convey. It would be dignifying too much
many of the events related in it to say that they are improbabilities:
they are simply impossibilities. The "Ways of the Hour" was, however,
like the preceding novels, often full of suggestive remarks, on many
other points than trial by jury. It showed in numerous instances the
working of an acute, vigorous, and aggressive intellect. The good
qualities it has need not be denied: only they are not the good
qualities that belong to fiction.

The pecuniary profits that his works brought him during this (p. 261)
latter period of his life there are, perhaps, no means of ascertaining.
Much of the literary activity of his last years was due to necessity
rather than to inspiration. He had been concerned for a long time in
compan