ss we feel very confident he
has never read. The manuscripts, which come under the last head, we are
morally certain he has never seen. That he has not seen them is capable
of the strongest proof, short of absolute demonstration. That he had
no acquaintance with Mr. Prescott's collection is a matter within our
personal knowledge. Had he been in a position to obtain copies for
himself, and had he availed himself of that circumstance, he would not
have failed to proclaim the fact in his loudest and shrillest tones. Nor
does he pretend that he has ever visited Spain, and had access to the
originals. Indeed, we do not think he would have ventured upon such
a step. He tells us, that, "besides the reasons already given for
distrusting the correctness of Spanish statements, there is another,
more secret in character, but not less potent than all combined--fear of
incurring the displeasure of that tribunal which punished unbelief
with fire, torture, and confiscation." If Mr. Wilson, as his language
implies, stands in fear of "fire, torture, and confiscation," and if
this is his most potent reason for distrusting the correctness of
Spanish statements, we can readily understand why he should have chosen
to remain on his native soil and write the history of the Conquest of
Mexico from "the American stand-point." Lastly, Mr. Wilson makes no
allusions to matter contained in the manuscripts which had not been
reproduced in the pages of Prescott. He is careful, indeed, to tell us
very little of the contents of these works; but he talks _about_ them
with the most gratifying candor, and in his choicest phraseology. He
informs us, that "Sarmiento's History of the Peruvian Incas altogether
surpasses that of Dr. Johnson's Rasselas and the Happy Valley." The
history of Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas" is related, we believe, by Boswell.
The great moralist composed his beautiful and philosophical, but
somewhat gloomy romance, in the evenings of a single week, in order to
obtain the means of defraying the expenses of his mother's funeral. The
story is a touching one; but Mr. Wilson's comparison is so inapt, that
we cannot help suspecting him of having had in his mind, not the history
of Johnson's "Rasselas," but Johnson's history of Rasselas. We think it
rather hard, that, having, in general, such a limited amount of meaning
to express, Mr. Wilson should have followed the maxim of Talleyrand, and
employed language chiefly as a means of concealing his t