nish, and of others
which betray a Spanish origin, the names of cities, villages, and
families, that rise spontaneously to the hand of the writer, and the
perpetual mistakes which their enumeration occasions, among which we
will only here specify that of C_a_ntador for C_o_ntador, and the
omission of the words "Duc d'Uzeda," which can alone set right a
flagrant anachronism--if we consider the effect of all these
circumstances, we shall look in vain for any reason to doubt the result
which such a complication of probabilities conspires to fortify.

The objections stated by M. Neufchateau to this overwhelming mass of
evidence, utterly destructive as it is to the hypothesis of which he was
the advocate, are so feeble and captious, that they hardly deserve the
examination which Llorente, in the anxiety of his patriotism, has
condescended to bestow on then. M. Neufchateau objects to the minute
references on which many of Llorente's arguments are built; but he
should remember that, in an examination of this sort, it is "one thing
to be minute, and another to be precarious;" one thing to be oblique,
and another to be fantastical. On such occasions the more powerful the
microscope is that the critic can employ, the better; not only because
all suspicion of contrivance or design is thereby further removed, but
because proofs, separately trifling, are, when united, irresistible; and
the circumstantial evidence to which courts of justice are compelled, by
the necessity of human affairs, to recur, in matters where the lives and
fortunes of individuals are at stake, is not only legitimate, but
indispensable, before tribunals which have not the same means of
investigation at their command. In this, however, the evidence is as
full, positive, and satisfactory as any evidence not appealing to the
senses or mathematical demonstration for its truth, can possibly be; and
any one in active life who was to forbear from acting upon it, would
deserve to be treated as a lunatic. Let us, however, consider the
admissions of M. Neufchateau. He admits, 1st, That Le Sage was never in
Spain. 2dly, Le Sage, in 1735, acknowledged the chronological error into
which he had fallen, from inserting the story of Don Pompeyo de Castro,
and announced his intention to correct it. 3dly, He allows, in 1724,
when the third volume of _Gil Blas_ was published, Le Sage annexed to it
the Latin distich, implying that the work was at an end--

"Inveni portum, spes