Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 100.djvu/192

176 and the Christian bell outrang the Moorish horn, and Te Deum was chanted by churchmen militant and triumphant in the Alcala. Columbus, too, confronts us; and Charles the Eighth; and the "Great Captain," Gonsalvo de Cordova; and Alonso de Aguilar, y eterna fama ganada; and Ximenes, stern, lofty, capacious soul, that purer, nobler, but more bigoted Richelieu of Spain. An august assemblage—convened on a broad and elevated platform—and taking part in a prolonged drama full of fifth acts and majestic crises of fate!

In the selection of his second historical work—the story of the Conquest of Mexico—Mr. Prescott is again happy in a subject of surpassing interest. With attractive narrative ease he records the embarkation of Cortes—one of those "hardy natures that require the heats of excited action to unfold their energies," like plants, dwarfish and barren in temperate latitudes, but exuberantly fruitful in the burning tropics;—-the great battle with the Indians of Tabasca—the pagan iconoclasm of catholic image-worshippers—the feud with republican Tlascala, city of stern warriors whose war attire so fascinated Madoc, when, inThen the historian brings before us the battle-pieces in which they suffer so ruinously;—the massacre of the Cholulans, news whereof first made the Aztec emperor tremble on his throne among the mountains;—the ascent of the great volcano (Popocatepetl) by the cavaliers, "who, not content with the dangers that lay in their path, seemed to court them from the mere Quixotic love of adventure;" one of them descending in a basket some four hundred feet into the steaming abyss, and repeating the visit till he had collected sulphur enough for the wants of the army, though Cortes concluded "on the whole" that it would be less "inconvenient" to import their powder from Spain;—the passage of the Valley of Mexico, and entrance into that imperial city of burnished battlements, and "far-circling walls," and "garden groves, and stately palaces, and temples mountain size;"—the description of the capital, its mansions fulgent with jasper and porphyry, its Venetian pomp of bridges and canals, its far-spread suburbs, its palaces and museums, its sanitary commissions and street orderlies and water-works, its zoological collections and botanical gardens, and exhibitions of native "Irish giants" and "Tom Thumbs" (or "Aztec Lilliputians"), its royal household, royal habits, royal bill of fare, and royal wardrobe;—the picture of the Great Temple (teocalli), of massive pyramidal structure, with its altars for human sacrifice, its colossal images of hideous aspect, its chapels foul to scent and sight with relics of the slaughter-house, its "hell," or dragon's mouth "bristling with sharp fangs and dropping with blood," in whose horrid throat the shuddering Spaniards saw, by one furtive glance, "implements of sacrifice and abominations of fearful import;"—the extravagantly bold seizure of Montezuma, his confinement in irons, and the execution of his officers;—the rise and progress of Aztec discontent, and its outbreak consequent on the infamous massacre by Cortes' lieutenant (Alvarado);—the attempted mediation of Montezuma, its indignant rejection by his subjects, his fall by their hand, his languishing and death, "drawing his last breath in the halls Of the stranger, a lonely