ted as an actor or an eye-witness. Writers who
knew him in his old age have left us descriptions of his appearance
and character. Mr. Wilson, however, holds that he never existed. The
chronicle which bears the name is, according to him, a work of fiction,
written by some Spanish De Foe, who had read the common narratives of
the conquest of Mexico, but who had no personal knowledge of the scene
in which his story is laid. What first excited Mr. Wilson's suspicions
was the charming simplicity and apparent truthfulness which, in common
with all readers of Bernal Diaz, he has found to be the distinguishing
characteristics of the narrative. "A striking feature," he tells us,
"in Spanish literature, is the plausibility with which it has carried
a fictitious narrative through its most minute details, completely
captivating the _uninitiated_. If its supporters were not permitted to
write truth, they succeeded in getting up a most excellent imitation. In
Bernal Diaz the alleged individual affairs of private soldiers are so
artfully interwoven with the general history as to give the effect of
truth to the whole. There being no fear of contradiction, this practice
of inventing familiar details could be indulged in to any extent, while
the beauty and simplicity of such a style fixes at once the doubting."

"Ah! si Moliere avait connu l'autre!"--

Oh that Fielding had known Mr. Wilson! Partridge, a mere unsophisticated
booby, thought simplicity the characteristic of Nature, and therefore
out of place in Art. Mr. Wilson, a transcendental Partridge, thinks
simplicity the characteristic of Art, and therefore out of place in
Nature. He is more than ordinarily severe on Mr. Prescott for not having
detected in Bernal Diaz these "striking marks of the _counterfeit_
instead of the _common soldier_." "We differ," he says, "decidedly from
Mr. Prescott." The difference seems to be, that Prescott regarded the
_appearance_ of truthfulness in the narrative of Bernal Diaz as _prima
facie_ evidence of its truthfulness, while Mr. Wilson regards the same
appearance as the most complete evidence of its untruthfulness.

But we have been anxious to discover some more definite and substantial
grounds for Mr. Wilson's hypothesis. In a couple of closely-printed
pages, devoted to the subject, he asks himself, again and again, the
questions,--"Who, then, was Bernal Diaz?"--"Who, then, wrote the
history of Bernal Diaz?" Failing to extract any reply from th