and commonplace; and his ladies, especially his young ladies, are as deficient in individuality as the figures and faces of a fashion-print.  Their personal and mental charms are set forth with all the minuteness of a passport; but, after all, we cannot but think that these fine creatures, with hair, brow, eyes, and lips of the most orthodox and approved pattern, would do very little towards helping one through a rainy day in a country-house.  Judge Temple, in “The Pioneers,” and Colonel Howard, in “The Pilot,” are highly estimable and respectable gentlemen, but, in looking round for the materials of a pleasant dinner-party, we do not think they would stand very high on the list.  They are fair specimens of their class,—­the educated gentleman in declining life,—­many of whom are found in the subsequent novels.  They are wanting in those natural traits of individuality by which, in real life, one human being is distinguished from another.  They are obnoxious to this one general criticism, that the author is constantly reminding us of the qualities of mind and character on which he rests their claims to favor, without causing them to appear naturally and unconsciously in the course of the narrative.  The defect we are adverting to may be illustrated by comparing such personages of this class as Cooper has delineated with Colonel Talbot, in “Waverley,” Colonel Mannering and Counsellor Pleydell, in “Guy Mannering,” Monkbarns, in “The Antiquary,” and old Osbaldistone, in “Rob Roy.”  These are all old men:  they are all men of education, and in the social position of gentlemen; but each has certain characteristics which the others have not:  each has the distinctive individual flavor-perceptible, but indescribable, like the savor of a fruit—­which is wanting in Cooper’s well-dressed and well-behaved lay-figures.

In the delineation of female loveliness and excellence Cooper is generally supposed to have failed,—­at least, comparatively so.  But in this respect full justice has hardly been done him; and this may be explained by the fact that it was from the heroines of his earlier novels that this unfavorable judgment was drawn.  Certainly, such sticks of barley-candy as Frances Wharton, Cecilia Howard, and Alice Munro justify the common impression.  But it would be as unfair to judge of what he can do in this department by his acknowledged failures as it would be to form an estimate of the genius of Michel Angelo from the easel-picture of the Virgin and Child in the Tribune at Florence.  No man ever had a juster appreciation of, and higher reverence for, the worth of woman than Cooper.  Towards women his manners were always marked by chivalrous deference, blended as to those of his own household with the most affectionate tenderness.  His own nature was robust, self-reliant, and essentially masculine:  such men always honor women, but they understand them better as they grow older.  There is so much foundation for the saying, that men are apt to love their first wives best, but to treat their