ven in
accomplished and well-informed literary circles. The facts relating to it
were nowhere recorded in an authentic and connected form; for it has not
been until within the last fifty years that the attention of historians
and general scholars has been turned in this direction. The labors of
Spanish antiquarians since that time, conducted as they have been with
great skill and industry, and under the supervision and encouragement of
the government itself, have been abundantly rewarded; and a vast number of
original documents have been accumulated in the public and private
libraries, which shed floods of light upon all historical events connected
with the conquests of Spanish armies, or the discoveries of Spanish
fleets, and have thus placed within the reach of writers at the present
day materials for lack of which even the able histories of ROBERTSON and
his contemporaries became meagre and unattractive. The historians of our
era are making the best possible use of these copious and invaluable
collections. The first result of their efforts was WASHINGTON IRVING'S
magnificent 'Life of COLUMBUS,' one of the most polished and perfect works
of its class in the English language, and which has done as much for
American literature abroad as it has for its eminent author at home. Then
followed PRESCOTT'S 'Ferdinand and Isabella,' pronounced by the best
critics on both sides the Atlantic to be one of the most interesting and
valuable histories ever published: and here we have, in his 'History of
the Conquest of Mexico,' drawn from the same rich source, a work eminently
worthy to succeed its brilliant and most 'illustrious predecessors.'

Within the limits which restrain us, we can of course do nothing more than
intimate very vaguely the general character and scope of this great work;
nor are we sure that even this is not quite a useless labor, as it must
find its way at once into the library of every literary gentleman
throughout the country, and be read with the greatest avidity by men of
every class. One of the most valuable portions of the history is the
extended view which Mr. PRESCOTT has presented, at the opening of the
work, of the character and civilization of the ancient inhabitants of
Mexico. The Spaniards conquered no tribe of untutored savages, roaming, in
the wild lawlessness of the aborigines of our section of the western
continent, over the sunny plains and smiling fields of Anahuac: they found
a people there wh