as to the propriety of that decision; and Mr. Wilson, we think, also did
well in sticking to Cass and "suppressing" Las Casas.[B]

[Footnote A: Author, compositor, and proof-reader were evidently engaged
in a "stampede,"--the (Printer's) Devil having strict orders to make
seizure of the hindmost. Part of a Spanish poem, borrowed, without
acknowledgment, from Prescott, seems to have gone to "pie" on the
imposing-stone, and been suffered to remain in that state.]

[Footnote B: Mr. Wilson would have been less unfortunate, if he
could have "suppressed" the work of Mr. Gallatin to which he has the
effrontery to refer as an authority for his ridiculous assertion, that
the "so-called picture-writing" of the Aztecs was a Spanish invention.
As Mr. Gallatin's essay is within the reach of any of our readers who
may be inclined to consult it, we shall content ourselves with a single
remark on the subject. That learned writer, who had made a real and
thorough study of the Mexican civilization, (having obtained from Mr.
Prescott the books necessary for the purpose,) was so far from denying
that hieroglyphical painting was practised by the Aztecs, or that
authentic copies, and even actual specimens of it, have been preserved,
that he himself constructed a Mexican chronology which has no other
foundation than these same picture-writings. There is one remark in Mr.
Gallatin's work on which Mr. Wilson would have done wisely to ponder. It
is this:--"The conquest of Mexico is an important event in the history
of man. _Mr. Prescott has exhausted the subject._"]

Our reason for believing that Mr. Wilson has never read the works,
relating to his subject, which have been published only in the original
Spanish or in translations into other foreign languages, is a very
simple one. He produces no evidence that he has ever read them. Some of
them he does not even mention. From none of them does he glean a single
fact that was not ready to his hand in the pages of Prescott. Except in
two or three instances, where he filches a reference from the citations
made by the latter historian, he brings forward no statement contained
in any of these books, either to support his own positions or to refute
theirs. Why did he take from Prescott--to whom on this occasion he
confesses his indebtedness--the facts in relation to the early life of
Cortes, (we would he had borrowed the language as well as the matter!)
if he had himself the means of consulting the