ing, and in a few years Indians were learning to read and write.
Pedro de Gante, a Flemish lay brother, and a relative of Charles V,
founded and conducted in the Indian quarter in Mexico a great
school, attended by over a thousand Indian boys, which combined
instruction in elementary and higher branches, the mechanical and
fine arts. In its workshops the boys were taught to be tailors,
carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, and painters."

Sir Sidney Lee, the editor of the "National Dictionary of Biography of
England," and the author of a series of works on Shakespeare, which
has gained for him recognition as probably the best living authority
on the history of the Elizabethan times, without deliberate intent,
answered Draper almost directly, in the following paragraphs from his
work, "The Call of The West," which appeared originally in _Scribner's
Magazine_, but has since been published in book form. Since Mr. Lee
cannot be suspected of national or creed affinities with the
Spaniards, and his knowledge of the subject is unquestionable, his
direct contradictions of Draper are all the more weighty:

"Especially has theological bias justified neglect or facilitated
misconception of Spain's role in the sixteenth century drama of
American history. Spain's initial adventures in the New World are
often consciously or unconsciously overlooked or underrated, in
order that she may figure on the stage of history as the benighted
champion of a false and obsolete faith, which was vanquished under a
divine protecting Providence by English defenders of the true
religion. Many are the hostile critics who have painted sixteenth
century Spain as the avaricious accumulator of American gold and
silver, to which she had no right, as the monopolist of American
trade, of which she robbed others, and as the oppressor and
exterminator of the weak and innocent aborigines of the new
continent, who deplored her presence among {515} them. Cruelty in
all its hideous forms is, indeed, commonly set forth as Spain's only
instrument of rule in her sixteenth century empire. On the other
hand, the English adventurer has been credited by the same pens with
a touching humanity, with the purest religious aspirations, with a
romantic courage which was always at the disposal of the oppressed
native.

"No such picture is recognized when we apply the touchstone of the
oral traditions, printed books, maps, a