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 persons of humble social position.  He wields his brush with a vigorous hand, but the brush itself has not a fine point.  Of all the children of his brain, Natty Bumppo is the most universal favorite,—­and herein the popular judgment is assuredly right.  He is an original conception,—­and not more happily conceived than skilfully executed.  It was a hazardous undertaking to present the character backwards, and let us see the closing scenes of his life first,—­like a Hebrew Bible, of which the beginning is at the end; but the author’s genius has triumphed over the perils of the task, and given us a delineation as consistent and symmetrical as it is striking and vigorous.  Ignorant of books,