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.

Every author in the department of imaginative literature, whether of prose
or verse, puts more or less of his personal traits of mind and character
into his writings. This is very true of Cooper; and much of the worth and
popularity of his novels is to be ascribed to the unconscious expressions
and revelations they give of the estimable and attractive qualities of the
man. Bryant, in his admirably written and discriminating biographical
sketch, originally pronounced as a eulogy, and now prefixed to
"Precaution" in Townsend's edition, relates that a distinguished man of
letters, between whom and Cooper an unhappy coolness had for some time
existed, after reading "The Pathfinder," remarked,--"They may say what
they will of Cooper, the man who wrote this book is not only a great man,
but a good man." This is a just tribute; and the impression thus made by a
single work is confirmed by all. Cooper's moral nature was thoroughly
sound, and all his moral instincts were right. His writings show in how
high regard he held the two great guardian virtues of courage in man and
purity in woman. In all his novels we do not recall a single expression of
doubtful morality. He never undertakes to enlist our sympathies on the
wrong side. If his good characters are not always engaging, he never does
violence to virtue by presenting attractive qualities in combination with
vices which in real life harden the heart and coarsen the taste. We do not
find in his pages those moral monsters in which the finest sensibilities,
the richest