The works that came out during the remaining years of his life were "The Crater," published October 12, 1847; "Jack Tier," published March 21, 1848; "The Oak Openings," published August 24 of the same year; "The Sea Lions," published April 10, 1849, and "The Ways of the Hour," published April 10, 1850. Of these "Jack Tier" originally made its appearance in "Graham's Magazine" during the years 1845-1847, under the title of "The Islets of the Gulf," and strictly stands first in the order of time. It shares with "The Crater" the distinction of being one of the two best of these later stories. It may be fair to mention that Bryant saw in it as much spirit, energy, invention, and life-like presentation of objects and events as in anything the author ever wrote. This will seem exaggerated praise when one reads it in connection with "The Red Rover," of which it is in some respects a feeble reflection. It was hard for Cooper to be uninteresting when once fairly launched upon the waves. Without denying the existence in "Jack Tier" of passages of marked power, no small share of it was merely a reproduction of what had been done and better done before. The old woman who is constantly misusing nautical terms is the most palpable imitation of the admiral's widow in "The Red Rover." It is a cheap expedient at best, and must at any time be used with extreme moderation. Above all, it is a device which is abused the very moment it is repeated. As displayed in "Jack Tier," it is simply unendurable. Cooper's silly people, in facts are apt to be silly not only beyond human experience but almost beyond human conception. The tragedy, moreover, with which this novel ends is intended to be terrible, while as a matter of fact it is merely grotesque and absurd. The tale reaches a sudden but necessary conclusion because nearly all the characters are disposed of at once by drowning or killing. There is scarcely any one left to carry on the action of the story.
"The Crater," which in one sense followed and in another preceded "Jack Tier," has a very special interest to the student of Cooper's character. He had now lived for so long a time a life remote from the real clash of conflicting views that he had finally reached that satisfied state of opinion which thinks the little circle in which it moves is the proper orbit for the revolution of thought of the whole race. As he advanced in years he narrowed instead of broadening. The intensity of his faith coupled with his energy of expression makes this fact very conspicuous; and in "The Crater" the reader is alternately attracted by the shrewd and keen remarks of the writer, and repelled by his illiberality. The novel tells the tale of a shipwrecked mariner cast away on a reef not laid down in any chart and unknown to navigators. This barren spot he makes bud and blossom as the rose. To the new Utopia he has created in the bosom of the Pacific he brings a body of emigrants. Their proceedings are entertainingly told. But the history of the decline of the colony from its primitive state of happiness and perfection, which is designed to furnish a warning, tends instead to fill the irreverent with amusement. While under the control of its founder and governor, who combined all the virtues, it is represented as enjoying peace and prosperity. Demagogism had no control. The reign of gossip had not begun. The great discovery had not been made that men were merely incidents of newspapers. Care was taken that the children should not imbibe any false principles, that is, any principles which the ruling powers thought false. The schools did not furnish much instruction, but owing to this considerate watchfulness they were innocent if they were inefficient. Still this ingenious arrangement for stopping the progress of the human mind could not work forever. From the start there was a dangerous element, though in this case the colonists had not come from New England but from the Middle States. Very speedily that innate depravity of the human heart which does not like to hear a clergyman read prayers, which looks with suspicion upon a liturgy, began to manifest itself. This, however, was kept under control until the arrival of new colonists. This Eden was then invaded not by one serpent only, but by several. Four of them were clergymen; one a Presbyterian, one a Methodist, one a Baptist, and one a Quaker. This was too much for the solitary Episcopalian who had previously been on the ground, and who is represented as combining a weak physical constitution with a very strong conception of his apostolic authority as a divine. It must be conceded that for a population of about five hundred souls the supply of spiritual teachers was ample. With them came also a lawyer and an editor. The seeds of dissolution were at once sown. The colonists became ungrateful, and began to inquire not only into the conduct of their governor, but even into the title by which he held some of his lands. He finally left the spot in disgust, and having first taken the precaution to dispose of his property at a good price, returned to his native country. A natural yearning to see the community he had established led the discoverer to revisit, after a few months, the scene of his trials. He sailed to the spot but he could not find it. A convulsion of nature similar to that which had raised the reef above the level of the waves had sunk it again out of sight. Ungrateful colonists, clergymen, editor, and lawyer, had all perished.
In June, 1847, Cooper made a trip to the West, and went as far as Detroit. One result of this journey was the novel of "The Oak Openings; or, the Bee-Hunter." This must be looked upon as a decided failure. The desire to lecture his fellow-men on manners had now given place to a desire to edify them; and he was no more successful in the one than he had been in the other. In this instance the issue of the story depends on the course of an Indian who is converted to Christianity by witnessing the way in which a self-denying Methodist missionary meets his death. The whole winding-up is unnatural, and the process of turning the organizing chief of a great warlike confederacy into a Sunday-school hero is only saved from being commonplace by being absurd. Far more singular, however, was the central idea of "The Sea Lions," the story that followed. This is certainly one of the most remarkable conceptions that it ever entered into the mind of a novelist to create. It shows the intense hold religious convictions were taking of Cooper's feelings, and to what extremes of opinion they were carrying him. In "Wing-and-Wing" the hero had been discarded because he was a thorough infidel. But Cooper's sentiments had now moved a long distance beyond this milk-and-water way of dealing with religious differences. In "The Sea Lions" the hero merely denied the divinity of Christ, while he professed to hold him in reverence as the purest and most exalted of men. But if there was any one point on which the heroine was sound and likewise inflexible, it was the doctrine of the Trinity. Whatever else she doubted, she was absolutely sure of the incarnation. She would not unite herself with one who presumed to "set up his own feeble understanding of the nature of the mediation between God and man in opposition to the plainest language of revelation as well as to the prevalent belief of the Church." In this case the hero is converted, apparently by spending a winter in the Antarctic seas. An important agent in effecting this change of belief is a common seaman who improves every occasion to drop into the conversation going on, some unexpected Trinitarian remark. When the master has almost against hope saved his vessel, and in the thankfulness of his heart invokes blessing on the name of God, Stimson is on hand at his elbow to add, "and that of his only and true Son." This novel is, indeed, a further but unneeded proof of how little Cooper was able to project himself out of the circle of his own feelings, or to aid any cause which he had near to his heart. He had had much to say about New England cant. Yet in this work he can find no words sufficiently strong to praise what he calls the zealous freedom and Christian earnestness of one of the most offensive canters that the whole range of fiction presents. It would be unjust to deny that when in "The Sea Lions" Cooper abandons his metaphysics and turns to his real business, that he creates a powerful story. One may almost be said at times to feel the cold, the desolation, the darkness, and the gloom of an Antarctic winter confronting and overshadowing the spirit. But there can be little that is more tedious than the dry chaff of theological discussion which is here threshed for us over and over again. Believers in the Trinity had as little reason as believers in Episcopacy to rejoice in Cooper's advocacy of their faith. There was nothing original in his views; there was nothing pointed or forcible in his statement of them. He meant to inculcate a lesson, and the only lesson that can possibly be drawn is the sufficiently absurd one that dwellers in the chilly spiritual clime of Unitarianism can be cured of their faith in that icy creed by being subjected to the horrors of a polar winter. Far more clearly does the novel show the falling-off in his artistic conceptions and the narrowing process his opinions were undergoing. At the rate this latter was taking place it seems probable that had he lived to write another novel on a theme similar to this, his hero would have been compelled to abandon his belief in Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, Methodism, or some other ism before he would be found worthy of being joined in the marriage relation to his Episcopalian bride.
The "Ways of the Hour" was the last work that Cooper published. Everything he now wrote was written with a special object. The design of this was to attack trial by jury; but he was not prevented by that fact from discussing several other matters that were uppermost in his mind. The incidents of the story utterly destroyed the effectiveness of the lesson that it was intended to convey. It would be dignifying too much many of the events related in it to say that they are improbabilities: they are simply impossibilities. The "Ways of the Hour" was, however, like the preceding novels, often full of suggestive remarks, on many other points than trial by jury. It showed in numerous instances the working of an acute, vigorous, and aggressive intellect. The good qualities it has need not be denied: only they are not the good qualities that belong to fiction.
The pecuniary profits that his works brought him during this latter period of his life there are, perhaps, no means of ascertaining. Much of the literary activity of his last years was due to necessity rather than to inspiration. He had been concerned for a long time in company with a number of men of business in a series of cotton speculations, and in others connected with Western lands. In both cases the ventures were unprofitable, and the desire of retrieving his losses was one of the causes that led to this constant literary production. There were other circumstances, too, besides his mere unpopularity that had tended to reduce the amount gained from what he wrote. After 1838, the income received from England naturally fell off, in consequence of the change in the law of copyright. The act of Parliament passed in that year provided that no foreign author outside of British dominions should have copyright in those dominions unless the country to which he belonged gave copyright to the English author. No fault can be found with this legislation on the score of justice. The value of anything produced by a citizen of the United States fell at once as a necessary consequence of the want of protection against piracy. The British publisher, not from any motive of mere personal gain, but from an unselfish desire by retaliatory proceedings to bring about a better state of things, went speedily to work to plunder the American author who favored international copyright in order to show his disgust at the conduct of the American publisher who opposed it. As a matter of fact Cooper's novels were from that time published in Great Britain, in cheap form, and sold at a cheap price. Such reprints could not but lower the amount which could be offered for his work. Newspaper reports, the correctness of which can neither be affirmed nor denied, frequently mention that for the copyright of each of his earlier novels he was in the habit of receiving a thousand guineas. We know positively that for his later tales, as fast as they were written, Bentley, his London publisher, usually paid him three hundred pounds each.
In America circumstances of another kind contributed to reduce the profits from his works. Most of them were published at a price that would have required an immense sale to make them remunerative at all. It was about 1840 that two weekly newspapers in New York, "The New World," and "The Brother Jonathan," had begun the practice of reprinting in their columns the writings of the most popular novelists which were then coming out in England. As soon as these were finished they were brought out in parts and sold at a small price. This piracy was so successful that imitators sprang up everywhere. The large publishing houses were soon obliged to follow in the wake of the newspaper establishments. The reign of the so-called "cheap and nasty" literature began. The productions of the greatest foreign novelists were sold for a song. The native writer was subjected to a competition which forced him at once to lower his price or to go unread. Beginning with "Wing-and-Wing," the rate at which Cooper's works were published furnishes a striking commentary upon the cheap professions of sympathy with letters current in this country, indicates suggestively the inspiriting inducements held out by the law-making power to enter upon the career of authorship, and shows with disgraceful clearness how utterly the interests of the men engaged in the creation of literature had been subordinated to the greed of those who traded in it. The barest recital of the facts makes evident the nature of the encouragement given. "Wing-and-Wing" was published at twenty-five cents a volume. So were "Wyandotte," "The Redskins," "The Crater," "Jack Tier," "The Oak Openings," and "The Sea Lions." The four volumes of the series "Afloat and Ashore" were published at thirty-seven and a half cents each; and at the same rate "Satanstoe" came out, and also "Ned Myers." It was not till Cooper's last work appeared that the price went up as high as a dollar and twenty-five cents. This was in one volume; but it is to be kept in mind, in considering these prices, that in America his novels regularly appeared in two.
One further experiment Cooper made in a new field; and with it the record of his literary life closes. In the year 1850 he tried the stage. On the 18th of June a comedy written by him was brought out at Burton's Theatre, New York. It was entitled, "Upside Down; or, Philosophy in Petticoats." For the three nights following the 18th it was acted, and was then withdrawn. It has never been played since, nor has it been published.
All these years he spent his time mainly in his home at Cooperstown. There, besides the pleasure he found in the improvement of the extensive grounds about his house, he gave full vent to that latent passion for wasting money in agricultural operations, which seems to be one of the most widely-extended peculiarities of the English race. On the eastern shore of the lake, about a mile from the village, he bought a farm of about two hundred acres which he called the "Châlet." The view from it was exceedingly beautiful, looking as it did down the Valley of the Susquehanna. The farm, too, had its picturesque and poetical features; but unhappily it was little adapted to practical agriculture. It stood on a hill-side, the abruptness of which was only occasionally relieved by a few acres of level land. Much of it was still covered with the original forest; and a good deal of the cleared land was full of stumps. To superintend the removal of these latter was one of Cooper's chief relaxations from mental labor. It is a desirable thing to do, but it has never been found pecuniarily profitable in itself. To this place Cooper daily drove in the summer season, and spent two or three hours directing the operations that were going on, finding constantly new ways to spend money, and doubtless pleasing himself occasionally with the fancy that the farm would at some time pay expenses. And in the best sense it did pay expenses. It gave regular diversion to his life; it ministered constantly to his enjoyment of the beautiful in scenery; and it occupied his thoughts with perpetual projects of improvement for which its character furnished unlimited opportunities. He had bought it for pleasure and not for profit; and in that it yielded him a full return for the money invested.