‘Parum succedit quod ago, at facio sedulò.’

In 1847, he produced Mark’s Reef, a story of the Crusoe genus, but far behind; the desert island being created ’positively for this occasion only,’ and being swallowed up in the sea again when it has served Mark Woolston and the novelist’s requirements.  It is characterised, however, by much glowing description—­especially that relating to the crater, with its noble peak, ’ever the same amid the changes of time, and civilisation, and decay; naked, storm-beaten, and familiar to the eye.’  The following year he was ready with The Bee-Hunter, wherein he sought to revive his pristine successes among American solitudes and Red Indians.  Again we hear the palaver of the stately and sentimental Chippewas; and again we watch, with sadly-relaxed attention, the dodging extraordinary of Pale Faces and Red Men.  Alas!

     ’Both of them speak of something that is gone:... 
     Whither is fled the visionary gleam? 
     Where is it now, the glory and the dream?’

The Indians have become comparatively seedy and second-hand individuals; the scenery, with occasional exceptions, looks worn; the machinery creaks and betrays itself, no longer possessing the ars celare artem.  ’’Tis true, ’tis pity; pity ’tis, ‘tis true.’  One novelty, nevertheless, this tale can boast, and that is the very able and interesting sketch of the bee-hunter following his vocation in the ‘oak-openings;’ nor is the portrait of Buzzing Ben himself an ordinary daub.  In 1849 appeared The Sea-Lions, a clever but often prolix work, which ought to keep up its interest with the public, if only for its elaborate painting of scenes to which the protracted mystery of Sir John Franklin’s expedition has imparted a melancholy charm.  The sufferings of sealers and grasping adventurers among ‘thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice’ are recounted with dramatic earnestness. The Ways of the Hour was both ‘nominally’ and ‘really’ Cooper’s last novel:  he announced it as such; and the announcement was not related to that fallacious category to which belong the ‘more last nights’ of popular tragedians, and the farewell prefaces of the accomplished author of Rienzi.  It was not the ‘going, going!’ but the ‘gone!’ of the auctioneer.  And critics maliciously said:  Tant mieux.  In The Ways of the Hour there was one vigorous portrait, Mary Monson, and several ‘moving accidents by flood and field:’  but with these positive qualities the reader had to accept an unlimited stock of negatives.  Besides the works thus referred to, Cooper wrote at short intervals a ‘serried phalanx’ of others, from the ranks of which suffice it to name The Heidenmauer, The Bravo, The Manikins (a weak and injudicious tale, quite unworthy of his honourable reputation), The Headsman of Berne, Mercedes of Castille, Satanstoe, Home as Found, Ashore and Afloat.  In miscellaneous literature his writings include a History of the Navy of the United States, Lives of Distinguished Naval Officers, Sketches of Switzerland, Gleanings in Europe, and Notions of the Americans.