Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 100.djvu/191

Rh. He does not write in the dark. His testimonies are open to "ocular" demonstration. The style he adopts is fluent and compact, but noways vigorous or sinewy in structure: indeed it sometimes palls a little on the taste from its almost languid monotony of "good writing." Nor do the thoughts breathe, any more than the words burn, with strong vital heat. There is uniformly a patient and lucid narrative of events, there is a diligent summary of generals from particulars, there is an able digest of the original crudities of matter; but deep philosophic reflection there is not, nor "energic reason," nor the enthusiasm of conscious power. He never fires up—never soars—nor quits the safe and serene haunts of comme il faut. He is clear of any charge of nationality in his authorship; his pages would become the most cultivated habitue of the Bodleian, and smack nothing of the peculiarities of Boston, U. S.—a fact which some people, whose querulousness we fail to understand, have imputed to him as a fault—as though his chronicles of Spain and her colonies in the far west ought, if written by an American at all, to be saturated with the quaint spirit of Uncle Sam at Home, and vocal with the genu-wine nasal tones of the Bay State.

If Mr. Prescott has a rich theme in what we believe to be the present subject of his labours, the era of Philip the Second,—he was perhaps still more fortunate in the choice of his first essay in historical composition—that of Ferdinand and Isabella. We miss, indeed, the master-hand of the grand historical painter, in his tableaux of scenes so imposing and so exciting as abound in that age of Columbuses and Gonsalvos; the artist is rather an engraver—smooth, finished, correct, but cold. Yet is the work a most attractive one in points of extrinsic as well as intrinsic charm. The author has expressed his fear of having been too strongly biased in favour of his principal actors, by dint of the natural tendency of familiarity with noble or interesting characters to beget a "partiality, akin to friendship, in the historian's mind;" and we own an assent to the justice of this apprehension, so far as our own estimate of the character of Ferdinand is concerned: but, taking Mr. Prescott on the whole, he is far from being chargeable with anything like one-sided enthusiasm, or exaggerated prepossessions; and it may be properly said of him, in the words of M. Villemain, that "si quelques événements n'offrent pas dans ses récite le pathétique terrible auquel s'attendait l'imagination du lecteur, on n'en doit pas moins apprécier la finesse impartiale de son esprit." The portraiture of Isabella seems to us unexceptionable—a Queen of Hearts not undeserving of the Shakspearean éloge:The glittering stage is thronged with other well-graced actors, Christian and Moorish: the fiery Ponce de Leon, "name of fear" to infidel Granada; and Medina Sidonia, his deadly yet magnanimous foe; and the sagacious Cardinal Mendoza, wise in council, and practical of purpose; and ambitious old El Zagal; and mild, degenerate Abdallah, at whose tearful flight,