Cooper would have been a better writer, if he had had more of the quality of humor, and a keener sense of the ridiculous; for these would have saved him from his too frequent practice of introducing both into his narrative and his conversations, but more often into the latter, scraps of commonplace morality, and bits of sentiment so long worn as to have lost all their gloss.  In general, his genius does not appear to advantage in dialogue.  His characters have not always a due regard to the brevity of human life.  They make long speeches, preach dull sermons, and ventilate very self-evident propositions with great solemnity of utterance.  Their discourse wants not only compression, but seasoning.  They are sometimes made to talk in such a way that the force of caricature can hardly go farther.  For instance, in “The Pioneers,” Judge Temple, coming into a room in his house, and seeing a fire of maple-logs, exclaims to Richard Jones, his kinsman and factotum,—­“How often have I forbidden the use of the sugar-maple in my dwelling!  The sight of that sap, as it exudes with the heat, is painful to me, Richard.”  And in another place, he is made to say to his daughter,—­“Remember the heats of July, my daughter; nor venture farther than thou canst retrace before the meridian.”  We may be sure that no man of woman born, in finding fault about the burning of maple-logs, ever talked of the sap’s “exuding”; or, when giving a daughter a caution against walking too far, ever translated getting home before noon into “retracing before the meridian.”  This is almost as bad as Sir Piercie Shafton’s calling the cows “the milky mothers of the herds.”

So, too, a lively perception of the ludicrous would have saved Cooper from certain peculiarities of phrase and awkwardnesses of expression, frequently occurring in his novels, such as might easily slip from the pen in the rapidity of composition, but which we wonder should have been overlooked in the proof-sheet.  A few instances will illustrate our meaning.  In the elaborate description of the personal charms of Cecilia Howard, in the tenth chapter of “The Pilot,” we are told of “a small hand which seemed to blush at its own naked beauties.”  In “The Pioneers,” speaking of the head and brow of Oliver Edwards, he says,—­“The very air and manner with which the member haughtily maintained itself over the coarse and even wild attire,” etc.  In “The Bravo,” we read,—­“As the stranger passed, his glittering organs rolled over the persons of the gondolier and his companion,” etc.; and again, in the same novel,—­“The packet was received calmly, though the organ which glanced at its seal,” etc.  In “The Last of the Mohicans,” the complexion of Cora appears “charged with the color of the rich blood that seemed ready to burst its bounds.”  These are but trivial faults; and if they had not been so easily corrected, it would have been hypercriticism to notice them.