a transcendentalist. He has whole chapters which display a strange combination of qualities, made up of Lord Byron, Jacob Behmen, and Mr. Jefferson Brick. Mr. Prescott, perhaps, has nothing in his histories equal to Michelet's delineations of Joan of Arc, Charles of Burgundy, Hannibal, or Cæsar. But if he is not so vivid and powerful in detached parts, he excels him in the unity and proportion of his whole matter, and the sustained life and interest of his narrative. The healthy combination and balance of powers in Mr. Prescott's mind are more valuable to him as an accurate historian, than would be the impassioned imagination of Michelet, or the judicial understanding of Mr. Hallam.

The style of Mr. Prescott's works, as might be expected from his character, is manly, perspicuous, picturesque, lucid, equally removed from stateliness and levity, disdaining all tawdry ornaments and simulated energy, and combining clearness and simplicity with glow. In the composition of a long work it is a delicate matter to fix upon a proper form. The style which would delight in an essay might grow intolerably tedious in a volume. When brilliancy or dignity, intensity or melody, become monotonous, they tire nearly as much as dullness or discord. The only safe style for a long history is one without peculiarities which call attention to itself, apart from what it conveys. It must be sufficiently elevated to be on a level with the matter, or its meagre simplicity and plainness would distract attention as much as luxuriant ornament, while it must vigorously resist all temptations to display for the mere sake of display. Mr. Prescott has been compared with Robertson in respect to style. The comparison holds as far as regards luminous arrangement of matter and clearness of narration; but, with the exception, perhaps, of passages in his "America," not in the graces of expression. The manner of Robertson is a fair representation of his patient, passionless, elegant mind. Its simplicity is often too prim, its elegance too nice. The smoothrubbed mind of the Scotchman risks nothing, is fearful of natural graces, fearful of English verbal criticism, fearful of violating the dignity of history. His diction loses sweetness and raciness in its effort after correctness, and, as a general thing, is colorless, characterless, without glow or pictorial effect. The water is clear and mirrors facts in beautiful distinctness, but it neither sparkles nor flows. His diction, however, has the rare quality of never being tedious, and fixes the pleased attention of the reader when the labored splendor of Gibbon would fatigue from its monotony. Mr. Prescott has the characteristic merits of Robertson with other merits superadded. His style is flowing, plastic, all alive with the

life of his mind. It varies with the objects it describes, and is cautious or vehement, concise or luxuriant, plain or pictorial, as the occasion demands. It glides from object to object with unforced ease, passing from discussion to description, from the council chamber to the battle-field, without any preliminary flourishes, without any break in that unity which declares it the natural action of one mind readily accommodating itself to events as they rise. Such a style is to be judged not from the sparkle or splendor of separate sentences or paragraphs, but from its effect as a whole. A person can only appreciate it by following its windings through a long work. Of course we speak of Mr. Prescott's style, in this connection, in its general character, after his powers of composition had been well trained by exercise. The diction of the earlier chapters of Ferdinand and Isabella displays an effort after elegance, and an occasional timidity of movement, natural to a man who had not learned to dare, and mistook elegant composition for a living style. He soon worked himself free from such shackles, and left off writing sentences. With the exceptions we have mentioned there is no fine writing-of writing for the sake of words instead of things-in Mr. Prescott's works. His mind is too large and healthy for such vanities. Perhaps the perfection of his style, in its plastic movement, is seen in the Conquest of Peru. There are passages in that which seem to have run out of his mind, clear as rills of rock water. They are like beautiful improvisations, where passions and objects so fill the mind, that the words in which they are expressed are at once perfect and unpremeditated.

We have thus attempted to pass beneath the surface of Mr. Prescott's works to show out of what combination of elements, moral and intellectual, they have taken their present form. It is only in this way that we can estimate the amount of industry, candor, intellect, and command of expression, he brought to bear upon his difficult labors. The analysis would have been easier had his mind presented more positive points, or his works displayed more stubborn individual traits. The different powers of his mind interpenetrate each other with such a plastic felicity, that the critic is puzzled to hit the right point which exhibits their relative size and strength. It is needless to say that intellects like that of Mr. Prescott are often underrated from the very harmony of their proportions. It is only by going carefully over their processes, that we appreciate their results.

Mr. Prescott's first work was the History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was the labor of ten years, and of ten years well spent. He was as fortunate in the selection of his sub

ject as in its treatment. It was in this reign that the Spanish monarchy may be said to have been organized, and the Spanish character permanently formed. Yet either from the paucity of materials, or from an underestimate of its importance, European writers left to an American the honor of first writing a classic history of the period. Two inconsiderable compilations, one in French by Mignot, the other in German by Becker, were the only records of an attempt to grapple with the subject as a whole. At the time Mr. Prescott selected it, the materials for its proper treatment were more numerous and available than at any preceding period. The researches of Llorente, Marina, Sempere, Capmany, Conde, Navarette, and Clemencin, had cleared up the darkness which previously enveloped some of the most important and interesting features of the subject. Through friends abroad and at home he was able to collect almost everything, both in a printed and MSS. form, which could illustrate the period, comprehending chronicles, memoirs, private correspondence, legal codes, and official documents. Then occurred an untoward circumstance which cannot better be related than in his own words :

"Soon after my arrangements were made early in 1826 for obtaining the necessary materials from Madrid, I was deprived of the use of my eyes for all purposes of reading and writing, and had no prospect of again recovering it. This was a serious obstacle to the prosecution of a work, requiring the perusal of a large mass of authorities in various languages, the contents of which were to be carefully collated and transferred to my own pages, verified by minute reference. Thus shut out from one sense, I was driven to rely exclusively on another, and to make the ear do the work of the eye. With the assistance of a reader, uninitiated, it may be added, in any modern language but his own, I worked my way through several venerable Castilian quartos, until I was satisfied of the practicability of the undertaking. I next procured the services of one more competent to aid me in pursuing my historical inquiries. The process was slow and irksome enough, doubtless, to both parties, at least till my ear was accommodated to foreign sounds and an antiquated, oftentimes barbarous phraseology, when my progress was more sensible, and I was cheered with the prospect of success. It certainly would have been a far more serious misfortune to be led thus blindfold through the pleasant paths of literature; but my track stretched for the most part across dreary wastes, where no beauty lurked to arrest the traveler's eye and charm his senses. After persevering in this course for some years, my eyes, by the blessing of Providence, recovered sufficient strength to allow me to use them with tolerable freedom in the prosecution of my labors, and in the revision of all previously written."

The range of Mr. Prescott's subject was extensive, and its different portions had to be taken up in their order, and their relative

importance and influence rigidly preserved. In a long and labored Introduction, imbodying a large amount of thought and research, he gives a view of the Castilian monarchy before the fifteenth century, and a review of the constitution of Aragon to the middle of the same period. This comprehends a luminous survey of all those manners, customs, and institutions, which represent national life and character; and it places the reader at once among the people of Spain as they were in the fifteenth century. His history, then, naturally divides itself into two parts; the period when the different kingdoms of Spain were first united under one monarchy, and a thorough reform introduced into their internal administration, and the period when, the interior organization of the monarchy having been completed, the nation entered on its schemes of discovery and conquest. The first part illustrates the domestic policy of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the second their foreign policy." Both are filled with great events and striking personages. In the first we have a detail of those measures by which two kingdoms, distracted by civil feuds or foreign wars, and seemingly without even the elements of national greatness and power, were united, reformed, and enabled to act with such effect abroad, as eventually to threaten the liberties of Europe. This part covers all those events in Castile and Aragon which preceded the marriage of Isabella with Ferdinand; the war with Portugal which followed; the measures by which the overgrown privileges and possessions of the nobles were reduced, the laws rigidly enforced, and the powers and revenues of the crown increased; the establishment of the modern Inquisition; the war of Granada, and the addition of that kingdom to the Castilian possessions, after a desperate struggle of ten years; the application of Columbus at the Spanish court, and his first and second voyages; the expulsion of the Jews; and a general view of Castilian literature.

The second part, which is about half of the whole work, opens with a masterly view of the affairs of Europe at the close of the fifteenth century, and the first invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France. This we think unexcelled for that clearness of statement by which the most complex relations of states are rendered intelligible to the least informed reader. The narrative of the Italian wars then follows, and the steps are minutely traced by which the policy of Ferdinand, and the valor and ability of Gonsalvo de Cordova, eventually succeeded in expelling the French from Naples and adding that kingdom to Spain. The rise of Cardinal Ximenes, his ecclesiastical reforms, the terrible zeal with which he persecuted the conquered Moors of Granada into insur

rection, and the wonderful conversions he effected by the logic of fire and sword; the third and fourth voyages of Columbus, and the general character of the colonial policy of Spain; the death of Isabella; the dissensions of Ferdinand with Philip, his son-in-law, with regard to the regency of Castile; the reign and death of Philip, and regency of Ferdinand; the conquests of Ximenes in Africa, and his foundation of the University of Alcala; the wars and politics of Italy, arising from the League of Cambray; the conquest of Navarre, by which the only remaining independent kingdom in Spain was blended with the Spanish monarchy; the death of Ferdinand and the administration of Ximenes; and a general review of the administration of Ferdinand and Isabella,are the leading subjects of the second portion of Mr. Prescott's history.

Great events generally arise from the conjunction of powerful natures and fitting opportunities. We call a man great when he has the sagacity to perceive these opportunities, and the will to execute what they teach. Individual character never appears in such strength as when it works in harmony with the spirit of the age. It is strong not only in its own strength, but in the accumulated energies of vast masses of men. There is a mysterious power urging it on, which, for want of a more accurate name, we call the general tendency of the time. No human mind can possibly grasp all the elements which enter into the spirit of an age; for this spirit is but one expression of the general life of humanity, one step in its progress or retrogression, and holds inscrutable relations to everything which has preceded it. To give a perfect philosophy of an age would be to understand the philosophy of God's providence, and to know the history of the future as well as the past. The nearest approximation to correctness in history is where circumstances and men are properly connected in respect to the production of events. It will not do to refer events wholly to individual character or to the spirit of the age. In the one case the man is isolated from humanity, in the other a tendency is confounded with an act. Thousands of men have opportunities and inspirations to perform great things, but men of genius are none the less rare. The Almighty seems to endow some persons with the power to anticipate the progress of events, and to produce at once what the operation of a general tendency upon a generation of men would postpone for years. An historian, therefore, fairly to describe an age, must have the powers of characterization and generalization so related as to operate harmoniously.

The general tendency of the age, which forms the subject of Mr.