crumble before the unimaginative temperament and mischievous acumen of those who deny their duty to believe, and their right to be convinced, save upon the laws of truth.

The volumes before us are the productions of an American. He is evidently a high-minded man. We know not prejudice against his country. We feel it, in all its great distinctions, to be our own. It has as much right to Milton and Shakspeare as ourselves: it has no better right than we to Edwards. As noble, correct, sterling, English has come from its shores as any our own can boast. Other vulgar rivalries are not to our mind. If there be in any of our critical organs and confederacies a disposition to carp at transatlantic authorship, we eschew all sympathy with it. The tastes of the two people, as likewise their habits, may not always be the same. Each may abet its own. Still is it only just to say, that the writing of our brethren is impressed with a warmth, a vigour, a freshness, which, with all its frequent inferiority of idiom and euphony, set before us no mean rule and model.

Mr. Prescott has proved himself in this work to be most indefatigable. His industry has been immense. His sources of information were widely scattered. To bring them together could be no common labour. For almost every statement, sometimes to the unimportant and even trivial, he is prepared with his corroboration. He has taken nothing upon report and general credulity. He works his way through mountains of conflicting testimony. For ten years he was employed in maturing his design. During some years of this term, he lost the powers of sight so far as any use could be made of it in reading, and in collecting materials. It is almost impossible to conceive the bitterness of such a disappointment and the seriousness of such a disadvantage to a man engaged in his high pursuit. What could an amanuensis do in deciphering differently-spelt signatures, and complexities of character and figure, which almost every paper of ancient date presents? A calamity like this would have disarmed a Zoilus. But we mark no inadvertence, no failure. It would seem, that conscious incapacity had only made him more wary. His step is only the more measured and sure. We have to excuse nothing as to his care, nor is he deficient in ardour. He feels his epic-theme. He is sometimes conscious of its glory to a manifest depression. It was very suitable that a Columbian,-for the claim to the discovery of that Continent by Amerigo Vespucci is ridiculously false-should undertake the history of events in which, to this hour, he inherits a vital stake. He owes his all to it. From his mighty sea-line, his eye naturally fixes upon Spain, before any other European country.

The coasts not only stand opposite to each other, and nearest of all, but this physical geography gave rise to their original connexion. How strange their respective fortunes! The monarchy, which realized that new world, so magnificent with valour and victory, so adorned by art and learning-like one gilded and elaborate pageant-still the clarion boast of fame,-sunk, feeble, creditless, ignoble, waned into insignificance, withered into decrepitude! The western hemisphere crowded, towards its south, with colonists of that monarchy, far nobler in character and spirit than the race which they have left behind,-while on its northern range a nation lives so unlike all the olden stock of this side the globe, so free, so intense, so intellectual, so self-possessed, that it can only be designed to counterpoise tyranny everywhere, and by its grand experiment to convince the species that liberty is social man's proper charter, as it is individual man's natural birthright! Who could have augured contrasts like these? Who could have painted these 'counterfeit presentments'? Who could have imagined that feeble, haggard parent-that high-minded, juveniscent offspring? Who could have thought of those far-distant dock-yards, and harbours with their powerful navy and of a marine, the proudest of all shores, the most powerful of all seas, shattered at a blow or mouldered by disuse? We welcome our author into this field,-not only as his nation gives him every claim to be heard on such a matter, but as it ensures a strict impartiality. It is as though he and his compatriots had been shut out of all this antiquity by the laws of space, and not only by those of time. There rises up before them a past, with which for ages they have had no interest or feeling intertwined. Diplomatic relations are now regularly established between these respective countries. The romance the more captivates them, who see in their own land nothing which conventionally bears that name. It is altogether new. They need not, however, regret that their youth was not so trained. They were not led through the gorgeous fable of childhood. They came forth in more masculine maturity of mind. Their romance-for they have one-is not of that nursery illusion in which older people have been bound; they have achieved their romance by enterprises of intelligence and virtue. It is not a thing of indefinable fascination: their own deeds create it. It is not fled: it yet lives on in a glowing accumulation. It is not to dream of: it is nakedly clear. It is not a past: it is rather present and to come. The danger is of a certain precocity. The education has been so manly that the mind may not be sufficiently stout for it; it has been so rapid, that it may not be properly inwrought or lastingly retained.

It might be asked, Why was not this History,-filled with exploits and discovery,-the most marvellous page which suc

ceeds mediæval tales,-written long since? Robertson only glances at it, and that but as prologue to a later reign. Peter Martyr (always to be distinguished from a name familiar in the conduct of the English Reformation) has left many letters which supply much contemporary information. But these are only the means and helps of history. The curate of Los Palacios is rather a garrulous and magniloquent old man. Spain in her history was for centuries unknown. The state-intrigue was rigorously closed in cabinets, the literary document was as carefully guarded in libraries; she was jealous of all publicity, she shrunk into monastic loneliness and silence. Revolution is a great pick-lock. Bars and gates give way before it. If freedom be the reward,for alas, it is not a necessary sequence !-then the people breathe. Their spirit returns. They resolve, with deep curiosity and thirst, to explore their ancestral times. They will know the causes of tyranny the moment they reap the blessings of release. Perhaps never, until now, could the Castilian Book of Kings have been truly written, or perhaps, profitably read. Much of the lore has been rescued as from a sealed sepulchre. The lamp which had so long been twinkling in it had wellnigh expired. It demanded every care and effort to turn these discoveries to any good account. But the business has been accomplished. We regard these volumes as an acquisition to the cause of historical authority and knowledge. We acknowledge ourselves debtors to their general clearness and consistency. Their spirit shows a chaste scrupulousness of mind. We can find no fault against their candour and generosity.

The work before us is the more welcome from the circumstance that the author has been somewhat anticipated by a countryman of his, a gentleman with whose magic power of invention and description it would be perilous to vie. Washington Irving has made a rhythmic period for himself. His 'well of English undefiled' plays like a fountain, with an iris on its spray and with a music in its pulsation. But in his historical fictions there is often danger. Seldom do men of genius succeed in their machinery. The chorus which was intrepreter to the ancient drama never broke the continuity, nor weakened the realness, of the action. Scott's eidola are commonly coarse and constrained. Moore's Fadladeen is a heavy incubus upon his flowing verse; and certainly, the Fray Antonio Agapida does not help the Chronicle of the Siege of Granada. The vast defiles of that country, its picturesque scenes, its serried defences, its elaborate refinements, its haughty race, its warlike costume, its sumless wealth, the citadel of nature, the school of knowledge, the storehouse of art,-have risen up beneath the talisman of this Apocry

phist in most unnecessary colours of enchantment. Truth was the only imagination to be invoked for such a narrative. It is not without some advantage, some good fortune, that the legendary went first, and that there was preparing, as he scattered his fancies, a more sober and faithful witness who knows no bias but that of evidence, who regards no dictation except that of fact.

But our approbation of the present undertaking is not unqualified. It is oftentimes cold and tame in its manner. Its style wants breadth and vigour. There is not enough of the right enthusiasm ; a stronger vein of Christian philanthropy, of good-will to men, would have adorned it like a layer of gold. If the sections, which are now far removed from each other, had been placed nearer and been more coherent, the whole would have proceeded in a more natural order. The notes are often out of taste. The biographies ought to have been more interlaced with the events. From this desire of giving complete parts rather than the inwoven tissue, the reader has frequently to return to a long-deserted point, and there to begin another excursion. The hemisphere is rich in its particular stars, but needs a more general and zodiacal light.

The principal fault of the publication is in its deficiency of philosophical generalization. There was room in the subject for the minute working out of principles until they should be established as the laws of mankind. There was abundant opportunity for tracing nascent custom into the noblest institutions of civilization and government. The author might have stood close to the spring-heads of streams which now roll in tides of power and majesty, and which cover the earth with the riches of intelligence and good. He might have dealt with the roots and the causes of things. His research demanded, and should have inspired, this determination. There were many known establishments and doctrines of the present century which he should have pursued to their earliest shape and source. A fine scope offered itself of bringing together the ancient and the modern world, exhibiting the renovation of the one, through its awful days, from the wreck of the other. He has not done this. His mind does not seem to pant for this highest fame. His endowments do not apparently qualify him in any marked manner for it. We now leave the author, with much respect and gratitude, and would offer some opinions upon that theme which he has prosecuted with most commendable diligence, though not with the highest order of success.

The name of Goth very early occurs in history, towards the decline of the Roman power. Along the great Scandinavian region,

it is, in several instances, still retained, to denote particular places. Gothini' and 'Gothones' are mentioned either as different nations, or as one, in the work of Tacitus, De Situ, Moribus, et Populis Germaniæ. It seems to be sometimes employed as a generic name. It stands for a race rather than for a tribe. It is fruitless to inquire into its etymology, or from such conjectures to infer its extent and use. It was indubitably an almost Arctic people, rising gradually into notice and influence, so that soon they impressed their name on more southern countries, and could not be overlooked by contemporary writers. Their history is one of emigration: we are almost wholly ignorant of their original or settled state. For probably they had pushed themselves thither from some Asiatic jungle or steppe. Their courses were so different, or their birth-places were so apart, that they are known to us by the grand cardinal distinctions-Ostro-Goths, Goths of the East, Visigoths, Goths of the West. The compounds are of their language, scarcely yielding a sound or sign of our own. It is in this latter branch that our chief interest at present lies. And as this column emerges from the dark forests and ice-bound fastnesses of the north, we watch their progress with the most excited notice. They are not the lawless horde, bandits and freebooters. They bear with them the ark which enshrines every type of those forms which direct and fashion modern civilization. In them is found that mind which now rules the most powerful nations of the earth, and by which they sway those which are ignorant and rude. In their occupation of a new position on the European mainland, we observe elements which are now developed in their forgetful and ungrateful descendants. Right-heartedness towards woman and wedded love was early noticed as their refined distinction, and this is the germ of the chivalry which afterwards spread its banners and songs and elegancies over surrounding states. Elective monarchy was another feature of their nationalism; and this is the earnest of that constitutional check upon power, without which liberty must die. A people which could thus stand out from the most polished countries of their age were naturally ordained, were actually constituted, to be the founders and patterns of all that is enlightened and ennobling in softened manners, liberal politics, and righteous laws.

Spain was a happy and prosperous country in the fourth century, being a member of the empire. Its grand divisions were Lusitania, (Portugal,) Boetica, (Andalusia, Murcia, the Algarves,) and Tarraconensis, inclusive of all besides. Its cities then were even those which still are extant, and their names may still be identified, -Emerita, (Madrid,) Corduba, (Cordova,) Seville, Tarragona. It