Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 100.djvu/194

 178 The story of the conquest of Mexico told, and applauded, its teller next told that of Peru, and with equal success. The "peculiar institution" of the Incas he discussed with appropriate painstaking—that aristocratic race, whose genesis and early history are "among the mysteries that meet us so frequently in the annals of the New World, and which time and the antiquary have, as yet, done little to explain"—that haute noblesse which was to the conquered races of the country "what the Romans were to the barbarous hordes of the empire, or the Normans to the ancient inhabitants of the British Isles." Their judicial system, almost Draconian in type; the Peruvian skill and success in public works—their postal communications, canals, high roads through and over mountain wildernesses, aërial suspension bridges, noble aqueducts, imposing terraces, and stupendous architectural feats;—their agriculture, and mastery of economical husbandry—redeeming the "rocky sierra from the curse of sterility," and enriching arid soils with guano and sardines unlimited;—these are described in full, though none too diffusely. The narrative portion, too, is replete with interest—the story of the Spanish adventurers and their fortunes in the New World: how religion was made the convenient cloak for a multitude of sins—how the Castilian, "too proud for hypocrisy, committed more cruelties in the name of religion than were ever practised by the pagan idolater or the fanatical Moslem"—how Pizarro battled with "impossibilities," and With his hundred-and-sixty men descended on the Peruvian camp, "a white cloud of pavilions" covering the ground "as thick as snow-flakes, for the space apparently of several miles"—how he superseded reasoning by force, the craft of speech by the craft of action,—how Atahuallpa was taken, condemned, and cut off, and the last of the Incas done to death. By the statistics of the Manchester Free Library it appears, and is duly enforced as a memorable fact, that one man—blessedly eupeptic, as well as inordinate of appetite—has actually accomplished the perusal o£ Sir Archibald Alison's twice-ten volumes; with conscientious punctuality, and nobly defiant of alien compassion, returning for tome after tome, until his right, to be entitled helluo in virtue of libri, not librerum, was indefeasibly made out. No such statistical immortality awaits the perusers (if there be such a word) of Mr. Prescott's histories; for they may be reckoned by centuries. He is not the sort of scribe that you skip in matter of course—as you must do in the worthy Sheriff's case, when he gets on corn-laws and finance—although we are bound ta add that the former is now and then amenable to a mild reproach for spreading out his gold-leaf too thin, and neglecting the art of condensation so invaluable in men of his craft.

The volume of essays, entitled "Biographical and Critical Miscellanies," comprises Mr. Prescott's best contributions to the North American Review, They are pleasantly and fluently written, and are pervadingly marked by an air of intelligence and an equable sobriety of style, though without any claim to critical originality, depth, or acumen. As criticisms they evidence care, scholarship, and mental refinement; but at the same time they lack power, subtilty, and muscle. With good sense and calm judgment they abound; but never are we dazzled by a sun-stroke