Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/508

488

 of Lorenzana in Cortés, Nueva Esp., Mexico, 1770, supply many important particulars, and may be consulted with interest. The researches of Humboldt, Essai Pol., Paris, 1811, have revealed many facts which may be considered as historical discoveries. Among the modern biographers of Cortés Arthur Helps occupies a prominent position. Born about 1817 he began to figure as a writer, anonymously, as early as 1835, and continued to furnish the press at frequent intervals with productions covering a wide range of literature, as essays, dramas, biographies, and histories. He also assisted Queen Victoria in preparing her Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands. For these and other efforts he was in 1872 honored with knighthood. As an essayist he has been compared to Lamb for good-natured satire and deep feeling, and his treatises generally indicate also the observer and thinker. The first notable work on America, The Conquerors of the New World, London, 1848-52, two volumes, a speculative and semi-historic account of the settlement of America, chiefly with reference to the race mixture, is not a work of much merit. It is now rarely met with, owing perhaps to Helps' own efforts to withdraw it from circulation. Yet the book served a good purpose in inciting him to further researches for the more thorough and elaborate History of the Spanish Conquest in America, London, 1858-61, four volumes, followed in 1868 by Life of Las Casas, Life of Pizarro, 1659, Life of Cortés, 1871. In the former work an excellent treatise on encomiendas is offered by Sir Arthur, who has in a measure competed with Prescott, while covering ground not embraced by him. But the main object of "he former work is still the race mixture, or rather the origin of negro slavery and its effect on America, and this accounts for the less thorough treatment of the regular history, and for the lengthy deviations from its natural course. Treating rather of the result than the progress of conquest, and inclining greatly to ethnologic and social data, the book is apt to disappoint those who take the title as an index. Although showing an admirable grasp of subject and philosophic treatment the historian is not unfrequently found to yield to the essayist, and at times poetic feeling and fancy take the place of facts. Free from affectation the language deserves the compliment of 'beautiful, quiet English,' bestowed by Ruskin, but as finished work it cannot compare with Robertson, Prescott, or even Irving. His Life of Cortés forms a slightly elaborated gleaning on this topic from the preceding volumes, and forms as a natural result not a thorough history of his conquests, but rather an attractive biography, which at times dwells too much on trifles, and incorporates idle statements; yet displays in other respects a clear perception of traits and incidents, frequently manifested in profound observations and adorned with brilliant sentences. ''Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. Nat. Civ''., Paris, 1857, four volumes, scarcely does Cortés justice. The abbé, though a fascinating writer, regarded the Conquest from a native stand-point, and consequently his views and descriptions are tinged with a corresponding coloring. Preeminent, however, among modern writers of this period of Mexican history stands Prescott, whom I have already considered in the first volume of my History of Mexico. In addition to what has been already said about his Conquest of Mexico it may be remarked that after the fall of the city his work is for the most part confined to the biography of Cortés, whose bright