en explained and excused
by the necessity of the case; and the subsequent events of the novel might
have been easily accommodated to the change we have indicated.

One of the best of Cooper's novels--as a work of art perhaps the very
best--is "The Bravo." But the character of Jacopo Frontoni is a sort of
moral impossibility, and the clearing up of the mystery which hangs over
his life and conduct, which is skilfully reserved to the last moment, is
consequently unsatisfactory. He is represented as a young man of the
finest qualities and powers, who, in the hope of rescuing a father who had
been falsely imprisoned by the Senate, consents to assume the character,
and bear the odium, of a public bravo, or assassin, though entirely
innocent. This false position gives rise to many most effective scenes and
incidents, and the character is in many respects admirably drawn. But when
the end comes, we lay down the book and say,--"This could never have been:
a virtuous and noble young man could not for years have been believed to
be the most hateful of mankind; the laws of Nature and the laws of the
human mind forbid it: so vast a web of falsehood could not have been woven
without a flaw: we can credit much of the organized and pitiless despotism
of Venice, but could it work miracles?"

Further illustrations of this same defect might easily be cited, if the
task were not ungracious. Neither books, nor pictures, nor men and women
should be judged by their defects. It is enough to say that Cooper never
wrote a novel in regard to which the reader must not lay aside his
critical judgment upon the structure of the story and the interdependence
of the incidents, and let himself be borne along by the rapid flow of the
narrative, without questioning too curiously as to the nature of the means
and instruments employed to give movement to the stream.

In the delineation of character, Cooper may claim great, but not
unqualified praise. This is a vague statement; and to draw a sharper line
of discrimination, we should say that he is generally successful--sometimes
admirably so--in drawing personages in whom strong primitive traits have
not been effaced by the attritions of artificial life, and generally
unsuccessful when he deals with those in whom the original characteristics
are less marked, or who have been smoothed by education and polished by
society. It is but putting this criticism in another form to say that his
best characters are p