In one thing we are disappointed in this novel. We did not look for character in it, for that is not Cooper’s _forte_: nor did we expect that his heroine would be aught better than the inanimate thing she is,—but we did expect he would have given us another of those magnificent sea-pictures for which, in all their sternness and sublimity, he is so justly celebrated. We were mistaken. Excepting a storm, which overtakes the Nina, we have nothing even approaching to the grandeur of the Pilot and the Red Rover. If Columbus did not figure in the romance,—and what, after all, has he to do personally with the denouement?—Mercedes of Castile would be the most tame of romances. Cut out the historical account of the voyage to San Salvador, by merely stating in one, instead of a score of chapters, that the hero performed his penance, and—we stake our grey goose-quill against the copy-right on it—that not two out of every dozen, who read the novel, will pronounce it even interesting. It is but justice to the author to say that the necessity of adhering closely to fact in his romance, is the true secret of its want of interest; for how could any hero, no matter whom, awaken our sympathy strongly, so long as Columbus figured in the same narrative? Besides, the voyage which the hero undertakes to win his mistress, being a matter of history, we are from the first without any curiosity as to its result—we want, indeed, all that exciting suspense, without which a novel is worthless. Our author appears to have been aware of this, and therefore introduces Omenea, and makes Mercedes jealous, and the queen suspicious, in order to create this suspense. For all the purposes of a love-story, therefore, the novel might as well have begun toward the close of the second volume, an introductory chapter merely being affixed, narrating rapidly the events which, in the present work, are diluted into a volume and a half. The interest of a romance should continue, let it be remembered, throughout the whole story; but in Mercedes of Castile it does not begin until we are about to close the book. * * * * * _“American Melodies.” Containing a single selection from the production of two hundred writers. Compiled by George P. Morris. For sale by Henry Perkins, Philadelphia._