The Two Admirals is of unequal interest—­the twin heroes, Sir Gervaise Oakes and Bluewater, engrossing whatever charm it possesses, and reacting disastrously on the tedious scenes wherein they bear no part; but they certainly do walk and talk like sound-hearted sons of Neptune, and there is no resisting the spell of the battle and the breeze which they encounter together, in the Plantagenet and the Cæsar. The Jack o’ Lantern, or the Privateer, was put forth with an expression of the author’s conviction that his faculty in this class of fictions was inexhaustible; to which, however, the critics demurred.  One of them observed that, following out the fantastical supposition which ascribes especial virtues to certain numbers, or even working out the analogy of the seventh wave, which sea-shore gossips tell us is ampler and stronger than its predecessors, the seventh sea-novel of Mr Cooper’s ought to be the most remarkable of the series for force, brilliancy, and movement.  But such symbolism was here found defective:  the seventh wave broke abruptly on the shore; the Jack o’ Lantern’s existence has been brief and uncertain as that of the ignis fatuus on the marsh.  The story introduces Caraccioli and the Neapolitan court, Nelson and Lady Hamilton; but without striking points.  There are some cleverly-drawn characters, however:  Clinch, the drunken but winning British tar; Raoul Yvard, brilliant, handsome, and Parisian all over, philosophism included; and Ithuel Bolt, a new (not improved) edition of Long Tom.  The plot is ingenious, though perhaps, constrained and far-fetched; and its dénouement makes the reader put down the third volume with increased respect for the novelist’s tact. Wyandotte, or the Hutted Knoll (1843), is a quiet yet animated narrative, descriptive of a family of British settlers and their fortunes in their wild Susquehanna home.  There is a pleasure, the author observes, in diving into a virgin forest, and commencing the labours of civilisation, that has no exact parallel in any other human occupation; and some refracted share of this pleasure is secured by every intelligent reader while engaged in perusing records so faithful and characteristic as those embodied in this tale. Ravensnest, with no lack of scenic embellishments, introduces to us three of the author’s happiest characters—­always excepting Leatherstocking and Long Tom—­namely, the two Littlepages, ‘Captain Hugh’ and his ‘Uncle Ro,’ and Mistress Opportunity Newcome.  The didactic asperities in which he indulged naturally marred the fortune of a book whose readers, whatever they might be, were pretty safely ‘booked’ for a scolding.  Otherwise, it gleamed with scintillations, neither faint nor few, of the light of other days.  But it was evident that Mr Cooper was overwriting himself.  He seemed determined not to be outdone in fecundity by the most prolific of his contemporaries—­as though it were a safe speculation or a healthy emulation to run against such light horsemen and horsewomen as Mr James and M. Dumas, and Mesdames Gore and Trollope.  Hence he might have appropriately echoed the complaint of the slave in Terence: