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once begun, at whatever sacrifice, the prize of which is to be the great and perhaps unenviable distinction of which we have spoken. Our eulogium, therefore, is necessarily qualified. We must not be understood as regarding this species of greatness, as the highest,-as deserving our unmixed acknowledgments, or, as at all comparable with that which arises from moral endeavor,--the achievement of intense thought, of an original framing and endowing intellect,--the soul, living and laboring only for the benefit and the blessing of mankind. The creative mind must always rank very far above the destructive. We have no purpose of confounding these moral distinctions of fame, upon which the better lessons of Christianity are now beginning very generally to insist. The greatness which we now discuss is that of a class,--

"From Macedonia's madman to the Swede,"

whose renown is acquired, and, perhaps, deservedly, in periods of society which need a scourge, an avenger, an executioner; whose claims to renown rest upon the fact that they are themselves superior to the exigencies of their times, make them subservient to their genius, and out of their blind strength and brutal excesses, evolve a power which, in some degree, contributes to the great cause of human progress. Keeping this distinction and limitation in mind, we do not scruple to declare that the greatest of these modern men was Hernando Cortés,-a man great in a period of great men,--achieving wondrously at a time of wondrous achievement,-displaying the very highest of those mental attributes which give elevation to the brutal deeds of war, at a period when these attributes were numerously possessed by others, and holding his triumphs with a firmness, and wearing his honors with a meekness, which leaves nothing to be wished for, which sees nothing wanting, in making the comparison of his character, as a whole, with that of any other conqueror, whether of ancient or modern times. Compared with that of Alexander of Macedon, and the career of Cortés will be found to be marked by performances in no respect inferior to those of his predecessor,-in many superior,-in all those, in particular, by which rare endowments are rendered useful and their fruits permanent. Among his virtues, which the other had not, he had coolness, modesty, self-restraint and religion. And who shall venture to com

pare the conquest of a feeble race like the Persian, enervated by the most effeminate luxuries, and emasculated by the most degrading influences of slavery, with the fierce people of Montezuma ;-a people by nature warlike, and rendered terribly so by their sanguinary religion, and the constant domestic conflicts which their religious sacrifices and cannibal appetites equally required them to maintain. It was only in the approach of the Macedonian to the wastes of Scythia, that he found an enemy worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with the warriors of Tlascala and Tenochtitlan ; and these, if comparable to the Mexican, in mere hardihood and brute courage, were very far inferior to them in the arts,--wanting utterly in those resources of invention and ingenuity, which the latter possessed,-upon which valor falls back from defeat, and provides itself anew, by fresh agents and implements, for baffling the progress of a con

queror.

The life of Cortés writes itself. We have long been in possession of its details and of its claims. The works before us scarcely add any thing to our former possessions. They correct small inaccuracies perhaps, they supply some minute deficiencies, they give us a few more details;-but, so far as the achievements and fame of Cortés are interested, they were unnecessary. His name and that of Mexico, are coupled for eternity. They survive together; and the books of his contemporaries, even when written in his studious disparagement, are unavoidably memorials of his greatness. These "letters of Cortés," by Mr. Folsom, are for the first time in an English dress. They are useful,--they facilitate the progress of the student. The translation is neatly and faithfully done. The style is simple, direct and unambitious. The introduction, by which he supplies the omission caused by the loss of the first letter of the conqueror, leaves nothing to be desired by the reader. His compilation is equally succinct and comprehensive. The work of Mr. Prescott possesses higher claims to our regard, as an original narrative. It is an elegant and eloquent production, rich and copious in expression, yet distinguished by a grace and simplicity worthy of any English historian. It is in the clearness and beauty of his style, and his conscientious and careful analysis of authorities, that Mr. Prescott's chief excellencies lie. We may travel with him confidingly, and yield our faith without hesitation, whenever his conclusions

are declared. We have reason to be proud of his production.

Most readers are acquainted with the general facts of this history. The grand outlines of the conquest of Mexico are familiar to all. They are, perhaps, equally well prepared to believe, that it was one of the most remarkable events on record, whether in ancient or in modern annals. As a study, it cannot be too closely read by him who would learn from example the best lessons of circumspection; of deliberate foresight, governing prudence, and that audacity, which, as if by inspiration or instinct, discerns, at the proper moment, when mere habitual courage and ordinary effort will no longer suffice. To the lover of romance, this is one of the most brilliant-full to overflow, of the very material which his passionate nature most desires-of those

"disastrous chances

Of moving accidents by flood and field;

Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach;
Of being taken by the insolent foe,
And sold to slavery—”

:

Ay, indeed! and something worse than slavery of being hurried to the highest towers of Moloch,--stretched out on the bloody stone of sacrifice, and impaled,--head downward, perhaps,-flayed alive before the most horrid of all blood-smeared, brutal divinities,--the breast laid bare,—the heart plucked forth, hot and quivering, and flung to the savage god, even while the flickering consciousness yet lingers in the straining eye-balls of the victim. These, and such as these,-terror-rousing, horror-raising pictures,--are to be read in this most wondrous history,--a history, we may say again, almost without a parallel.

Cortés was the born-hero of this history. We have a faith in this providential adaptation of the agent to the work. We believe that each great man has his mission. We are not now speaking of great men in the newspaper sense of the term, not your little great man,-great on the stump, in the canvas, in the management of parties and committees. Of the kind of greatness to which we now allude, the world is never overstocked. Our great men are not men of every day. They arise once in an age, and are the saviours, at least, the representatives of that age. They distinguish it by a mark, and it thence remains unforgotten. They embody

its highest virtues, its most eminent characteristics. They do for it what cannot be so well done by any other personwhat is done by no other person-and what, until they have shown the contrary, is thought by all other persons to be beyond the reach of performance. They are the people who show, like Alexander, how the knots of Gordius may be untied; like Columbus, how eggs may be made to stand on their own bottoms; like Cortés, how the fierce, goldloving Spaniard, faithless to all beside, may yet be won to follow the footsteps of one man, in the face of seeming certain death, with almost worshipping fidelity.

Hernando Cortés was the chosen hero of this great conquest. He had all the requisite endowments for the work. The eye of foresight, directing with the most consummate prudence; the deliberate resolve, which never changes its aspect, nor swerves from its course, when it has once received its impulse from matured reflection; the capacity, so to fathom the souls and resources of the men, his subordinates, as to be able to assign, at a moment, the particular duty to each, which he is best able to perform; the nerve, never to falter or suffer surprise; the will, never to recede when taught by deliberate conviction to advance; the courage, which, not shrinking from fearful deed, when necessary to be done-when necessary to safety and success—yet never indulges in wanton exercise of power;-yields to no bloody mood, no wild caprice of passion, and is beyond the temptations of levity; great physical powers of performance and endurance; a valor swift as light; a soul as pure as principle; a quickness of thought; a promptitude of perception; a ready ingenuity; a comprehensive analysis of difficulties and resources ;-these, with many other virtues of character, active and passive, might be enumerated, to establish his claims to the high place which we are prepared to assign him. Of the great moral question, whether the conquest itself might not properly, have been forborne,-whether it were justified, not merely by the morals of nations-such morals as nations then possessed-but under the intrinsic and inevitable standards of right and religion; we shall say nothing. This is a question which we need not here discuss. Tried by the moral judgments of our day, and there would be but one opinion upon the Mexican conquest; such an opinion as we are all prepared to pronounce upon the murderous warfare recently pursued by the English

among the junks and cities of the Chinese. The mind naturally revolts from the idea that justification can be found for any conqueror, wantonly overthrowing the altars, defiling the homes, and slaughtering thousands of a people, who have offered no provocation to hostility,-whose lands lie remote from the invader,-whose interests and objects conflict not with his; and, whose whole career has been, so far as he is concerned, of an equally innocent and inoffensive character. And, when this invasion and butchery occur in the history, and at the expense of a people, so far advanced in the arts of civilization as the Mexicans, the enormity becomes exaggerated, and-were we not to consider the standards of morality prevalent in the time of the conquest, and the farther apparent justification to be found in the sanguinary and horrible practices of the Mexicans themselves-our sentence would be one of instant and unqualified condemnation. But, discarding this inquiry, and leaving the question open for future moralists, let us pass to a rapid survey of the prominent events in the life of the remarkable man by whom the conquest of Mexico was undertaken and achieved.

Hernando Cortés was born at Medellin, a little town of Estremadura, in the year 1485. He sprung from the people. When he grew famous, the biographers, as if anxious to show that nature could not be the source of greatness, contrived to discover that he was of noble family and illustrious connections. The probability is that this was mere invention. Enough for us, that he was a man. Fortunately for him, he was a poor one. The energies of his original nature were not sapped away by artificial and enfeebling training. He had all the proofs, in his character, of having come from sturdy stocks, with a genius uncramped by sophistication. Nature was left tolerably free to work her will on her favorite. Happily, if schools and colleges did little to improve, they did as little to impair his genius. At an early period, he gave proof of some of those qualities by which he was finally distinguished. With great ardency of temper, he betrayed a resolute will and an independent judgment,qualities which, though they may sometimes arise from mere blood, are yet quite as frequently the distinguishing attributes of inherent capacity, which, in the consciousness of its own resources, is anxious for their development, and irks at all restraint which delays their exercise. They would

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