Prescott's history, was, in the domestic affairs of European nations, to a concentration of power; and, in their external relations, to combinations for conquest or defense, and contests for pre-eminence. The sovereigns under which this revolution in the domestic and foreign system of the European states was accomplished, were admirably suited to their task. By the union of Castile and Aragon under Ferdinand and Isabella, the subsequent conquests of Granada, Navarre, and Naples, the acquisition of a new world in America, and the marriage of the heiress of the Spanish dominions with the son of the emperor Maximilian, Spain, under the house of Austria, became the most important power in Europe, and long threatened its liberties. Robertson, in his History of the emperor Charles the Fifth, has taken up the history at about the period where Mr. Prescott's ends, and exhibited the Spanish-Austrian power in its most colossal form. Our countryman has traced it from its commencement, and developed the causes of its growth. To understand Robertson such a history was wanted, and certainly its subject would not yield in interest to that of the reign of Charles the Fifth. As the period which Mr. Prescott selected was that in which the modern system of Europe may be said to have taken its rise, and was in an especial degree encumbered with falsehood and sophistry, it was a subject which seemed at once to tempt the historian by its importance and repel him by its diffi

culties.

The history of Ferdinand and Isabella shows that Mr. Prescott thoroughly comprehended the revolution to which we have referred, and his exposition of it is admirable. His work accurately reflects the spirit of the age and the character of its prominent actors; and we have been especially struck with his felicity in developing character, not in an isolated analysis of qualities, but in the narration of the events which called them forth. He so blends character with events that their mutual relation is distinctly seen. The reader instinctively connects persons with actions,-what they are with what they perform; and, in doing this, he has not merely an idea of their external conduct, but a clear insight into their inward aims and motives. Thus to diffuse the subtlest results of analysis through the very veins of narration, and picture forth character to the imagination, is a fine triumph of art. That mechanical delineation of character, which consists in summing up a man's various qualities at the end of a narration of his objects and actions, Mr. Prescott also possesses; but in him it seems like a repetition of what he has continually suggested throughout his whole narrative. In his accounts of events we are able to estimate better the degree

of power in the actors, by his exhibiting them as following or resisting current tendencies.

Among the wide variety of persons and events to which Mr. Prescott's first history relates, five characters stand prominently forth:---Isabella, Ferdinand, Columbus, Gonsalvo de Cordova, and Ximenes. The character of Isabella Mr. Prescott has skillfully developed, through all her various relations as queen, wife, and mother. It seems to us that her moral qualities were fully equaled by her intellectual, and that she excelled Ferdinand in both. Indeed, the important events of the reign are all traceable, in a greater or less degree, to her. She obtained the crown of Castile as much by her virtue, prudence, and sagacity, as her right. Her intellect, as well as her affection, was shown in her selection of Ferdinand as her husband. It was she who made force yield to law in Castile, and the reforms in its administration refer to her as their source. The conquest of Granada might not have been achieved, had it not been for her providence, forecast, and determination. At the time almost every one else despaired, it was her indomitable resolution that infused new life into the army. It was she who appreciated and aided Columbus, when the sharp, wily intellect of Ferdinand was blind to the grandeur and practicability of his plan; and to her it was owing that the new world was added to the dominions of Spain. Against the advice and entreaty of Ferdinand she raised Ximenes to the see of Toledo, and provided a fitting station for the development of his vast energies. Her sagacity detected the military genius of Gonsalvo de Cordova, when he was acting in a subordinate capacity in the war of Granada, and to her it was owing that he had the command of the army in the Italian wars. It is conceded that her influence was paramount in the domestic policy of the kingdom, in all those measures which gave it power to act with vigor abroad; but it appears to us that, in her selections of Columbus and Gonsalvo, she was also the spring of the foreign acquisitions of Spain. Ferdinand, with all his capacity as a warrior and statesman, and with all that unscrupulousness which gave him a command of the whole resources of perfidy and craft, was too selfish ever to be wisely and greatly politic. He did the dirty work of government and conquest with inimitable ability and appearance of cleanliness. His dark and cunning mind fairly circumvented every crowned and triple-crowned contemporary plotter. But he had not sufficient elevation of character to comprehend a great nature. The great navigator, the great captain, the great priest, whose genius the genius of Isabella instinctively recognized, were all treated by him with suspicion and ingratitude. The faults.

of Isabella were faults engrafted on her nature by superstition; and the persecutions she allowed or countenanced arose from a mistaken sense of religious duty, stimulated by a bigoted confessor. Ferdinand had no more religion than Machiavelli, and was a persecutor from policy or interest. The greatest satire on the Catholicism of the period is contained in his title of Ferdinand the Catholic. We are aware of no female sovereign with whom Isabella can be compared in the union of energy and intelligence with grace, sweetness, and humane feeling. Mr. Prescott has instituted an ingenious parallel between her and Elizabeth of England, in which he happily traces their points of resemblance and contrast. The Castilian queen differed from the great English virago in being a woman in reality as well as name.

In all of Mr. Prescott's histories he has to do with Spanish character, and this he has profoundly studied both in itself and as it was gradually molded by religious and political institutions. He has considered the Spaniard in his character as crusader and oppressor, and developed with exquisite skill the connection of his religion with his rapacity. Spain was especially calculated to be the Catholic country of Europe; for there Catholicism was associated with the national existence and glory, with the gratification of every selfish passion. For seven or eight hundred years previous to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain had been the theatre of a fierce "holy" war between Christian and Musselman, for the possession of the country. Under the banner of the cross the infidel had been gradually beaten back from position to position, until his power was confined within the kingdom of Granada. All the passions which Christianity would rebuke, all the passions which war stimulates, Catholicism sanctified. There was a fatal divorce between religion and morality. Lust, avarice, cruelty, murder, could all rage under a religious garb. Every devout Christian might practice any enormity upon the heretic or infidel; and devout Christians might plunder each other if the church sanctioned the robbery. The mischievousness of the system was, that the imagination and religious sentiments of the people were affected as well as their bad passions, and strong faith sided with devilish lusts. It is doubtful whether the Spaniard could have endured the privations which accompanied his conquests in America, unless he had been sustained by some religious fanaticism; yet his zeal did not stay his hand from pillage and massacre. His bigotry was strong enough to deceive his humanity, and endowed the wolf with the heroism of the missionary.

In the History of Ferdinand and Isabella we perceive the religion VOL. VIII.-2

of Spain, France, and Italy, in connection with public affairs, and are able to estimate the degree of moral control it exercised over the action of states. In the Histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru we see it more directly in its influence upon individuals, taken from various classes of society, and pretty well representing their age. No reader who profoundly studies both aspects of this phenomenon, can fail to acknowledge the wonderful flexibility and power of adaptation in Catholicism, at the same time he finds new reasons to rejoice in the Reformation. He will see clearly reflected, in Mr. Prescott's page, the ductility with which Catholicism adapted itself to the natural disposition of its believers, binding equally saints and sinners to its communion, and strong with the strength of the worst and best men of the time. The policy of Spain, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, was to have all its enterprises stamped with a holy character. Its relations with the pope are among the most curious points in its history. It is hardly a paradox to say that Spain would have seceded from the church, had its interests or passions been crossed instead of aided by the Papacy. Ferdinand's dealings with the pope are exceedingly characteristic. When the latter interfered with the internal affairs of his kingdom, or opposed him abroad, he had no scruples in covering him with public disgrace or in making war upon him. He found the pope a very convenient person to use, but he took care not to be used by him.

The second work of Mr. Prescott, the History of the Conquest of Mexico, appeared in six years after the publication of his first. The materials for this were such as no other historian had ever enjoyed. From Madrid alone he obtained unpublished documents, consisting of military and private journals, contemporary chronicles, legal instruments, correspondence of the actors in the conquest, &c., amounting to eight thousand folio pages. From Mexico he gleaned numerous valuable MSS., which had escaped the diligence of Spanish collectors. These, with what he derived from a variety of other sources, including the archives of the family of Cortés, placed in his possession a mass of materials sufficient to give a basis of undoubted facts to his wonderful narrative, and subdue the skepticism of the modern reader by the very accumulation of testimony. It is needless to add that he also obtained everything in a printed form which had reference to his subject. The result of all his labors, of research, thought, and composition, was a history possessing the unity, variety, and interest, of a magnificent poem. It deals with a series of facts, and exhibits a gallery of characters, which, to have invented, would place its creator by

the side of Homer; and which to realize and represent, in the mode Mr. Prescott has done, required a rare degree of historical imagination. It may be that the imperfection of the historian's eyes was one cause of his success. He was compelled to deve lop his memory to the full extent of its capacity; but memory depends, in a considerable degree, upon understanding, sensibility, and imagination. To recollect facts they must be digested, methodized, and realized. The judgment must place them in their natural order; the heart must fasten its sympathies to them; the imagination must see them as pictures. They are then a possession for ever. To the inward vision of the mind they are as much living realities as though they were present to the outward eye.

In our limited space we cannot give anything which would approach an account of this work. In its general plan and composition it illustrates what we have previously said of Mr. Prescott's processes as an historian. We had marked our copy on every page, intending to notice numerous passages for comment or quotation; and certainly the work is full enough of strange facts and wonderful adventures to awaken new views of the powers and perversions of human nature. Mr. Prescott first introduces the reader to the people and country of Mexico, and gives a luminous view of the ancient Mexican civilization. In the space of two hundred pages he comprehends a survey of the races inhabiting the country, and brings before us their character, history, government, religion, science, arts, domestic manners, everything, in short, necessary to a comprehension of their intellectual, moral, and political condition at the period Cortés commenced his enterprise. This introduction is mostly confined to the Aztecs, as they were the fiercest, most sanguinary, most intelligent, and most powerful, of the Mexican races; and as it was against their empire that the efforts of the conquerors were principally directed. Then follows the story of the conquest with all its remarkable features of heroism and cruelty. Cortés is, of course, the central figure of the group, the soul and the body of the enterprise, and around him are gathered some of the bravest warriors that romance ever imagined, encountering dangers and surviving miseries which, in a romance, would be pronounced impossible. The picture presents the meeting of two civilizations, brought in a rude shock against each other, and the triumph of the race which was superior in craft and science. In the followers of Cortés we have, what we would now call a gang of thieves, pirates, ravishers, and assassins, displaying in their worst excesses the courage and endurance of heroes, and