In _The Headsman_ we follow the story of a highborn girl who has given her heart to a young soldier of fortune only to discover in him the son of that most loathed of beings, the official executioner of Berne. The office is hereditary, and were the youth’s real condition known the odious duties would in time fall on him. It is a foregone conclusion that Sigismund shall be found to be of noble birth, and Adelheid’s reward proportioned to the greatness of her soul. This is but one thread of a fairly complicated and romantic plot. The interest of the narrative is well sustained and the denouement unanticipated. None of these three romances is, strictly speaking, a novel of purpose, and the least attractive deserves friendlier critical treatment than is commonly accorded it. In the same group may be placed _Mercedes of Castile_, which, if it cannot hold the attention by reason of the loves of Don Luis de Bobadilla and Mercedes, and the fate of the unfortunate Ozema, may be read (by whoever can take history well diluted with fiction) for the story of Columbus’s first voyage. _The Monikins_ contrasts the ways of men with the ways of monkeys, much to the disadvantage of men. Really it is no duller than some of the professed satire of the present day; it is merely longer and more desperately serious. _Homeward Bound_ and _Home as Found_ form two parts of a single novel. The satire of the first part is forgotten in the movement of the narrative, the sea-chase, the wreck off the African coast, the fight with the Arabs. The second part is a diatribe on New York and Cooperstown in particular, and America in general. The chief characters, the Effinghams, mean well, but ‘they have an unfortunate manner,’ and their disagreeable traits are not so piquant as to be entertaining. Steadfast Dodge, the editor, is almost as unreal as the Effinghams. Captain Truck is a genuine brother man, resourceful as master of the ‘Montauk,’ and not helpless when figuring (without his connivance) as a great English author, at Mrs. Legend’s literary soirée. Horatio Greenough had the ‘Effingham’ books in mind when he wrote to Cooper: ‘I think you lose hold on the American public by rubbing down their shins with brickbats as you do.’ VIII TRAVELS, HISTORY, POLITICAL WRITINGS AND LATEST NOVELS Cooper was a giant of productivity. Some brief comment has been made on twenty-three of his novels. It is impossible in the limits of this study to do much beyond giving the titles of his remaining books. _The History of the Navy of the United States of America_ begins with ‘the earliest American sea-fight’ (May, 1636), when John Gallop in a sloop of twenty tons captured a pinnace manned by thieving Indians, and closes with the War of 1812. The noteworthy features of the book are accuracy, independence, severity of style, and freedom from spread-eagleism. The brief _Chronicles of Cooperstown_, written in a plain way, has the natural interest attaching to the subject and the author.