houghts.

Mr. Wilson nowhere asserts, in so many words, that he has had access to
manuscript authorities. His mode of speaking of them, however, implies
as much, and he evidently intends that this inference should be drawn by
his readers. In a printed note, addressed to his publishers, disclaiming
any intention of "assailing the memory of the dead,"--a disclaimer
which was not needed to suggest the reason why his book, loaded with
typographical blunders, was hurried through the press,[A]--he "insists
on the lawyer's privilege of sifting the evidence--a labor which Mr.
Prescott was incapable of performing, from a physical infirmity"; and he
undertakes to prove that Mr. Prescott's "books and manuscripts were not
reliable authorities." Now even "the lawyer's privilege" does not extend
to sifting evidence which he has never heard; and if Mr. Prescott was
"incapable, from a physical infirmity," of properly scrutinizing his
authorities, it was the more necessary that Mr. Wilson, with his own
wonderful eyes, should undertake the task. There is one manuscript which
he might be supposed to have had a strong desire to examine. His book
professes to be a vindication of "Las Casas' denunciations of the
popular historians" of the Conquest. The work of Las Casas, supposed to
contain these denunciations, is his History of the Indies. Mr. Wilson
acknowledges that he has never seen this work; it has, he says, "been
wholly suppressed"; and he is terribly severe on the censorship and the
Inquisition for having been guilty of this suppression. But the only
suppression in the case is, that the book has never been printed. The
original manuscript may be consulted at Madrid. A copy of the most
important parts of it is in Mr. Prescott's collection. Mr. Wilson might
have seen that copy, had he expressed the wish. He did not, however,
give himself this trouble; and we think he was right. The truth is,
that, of all the Spanish historians of the Conquest of Mexico, Las Casas
is the one who has indulged most largely in hyperbole. Writing, with
little personal knowledge, in support of a theory which required him
to magnify the ruin accomplished by the _Conquistadores_, he has
exaggerated the population of the Mexican empire, the number and size of
its towns, and the evidences of its civilization. It was on this very
account that Navarrete, who examined the work with a view to its
publication, came to the decision not to print it. We have little doubt