T MAY well be doubted whether any other historian was ever so loved both by those who knew him personally and by those who counted themselves fortunate in knowing him through his books as was William H. Prescott. Indeed that love promises to be perennial, for "The Conquest of Mexico" and "The Conquest of Peru" continue to be the delight of the intelligent schoolboy and bid fair to maintain their hold upon public interest in succeeding generations.

Prescott was a native of Salem, Massachusetts, having been born in that city on the 4th of May, 1796. His father was a lawyer, and he inherited from him literary tastes, love of learning and great mental vigor. He was accidentally struck, while a Junior at Harvard, by a piece of hard bread, thrown by a fellow student, and the blow deprived him forever of the use of his left eye, gave him many months of tedious suffering in darkened rooms, and resulted in such serious damage to the other eye as to make it of little and constantly decreasing use to him. He had intended to be a lawyer, but this accident made another choice necessary. He deliberately resolved upon a literary career and prepared himself for it in the most thorough and painstaking way imaginable. A memorandum dated October, 1821, lays out a course of study which one might think unnecessary for a graduate of Harvard College, but which he undertook for the purpose of perfecting his style, and with what degree of success the universal admiration of his works well testifies. It was as follows:

"1. Principles of Grammar, correct writing, etc.

2. Compendious history of North America.

3. Fine prose-writers of English.

4. Latin classics one hour a day."

This course, omitting the American history, he faithfully pursued for about a year, when he took up the study of French and, later, of German. His study of Spanish and consequently his choice of the topics of his great works came about almost accidentally. He had found the study of German very difficult, so much so that he was in despair. His friend George Ticknor had delivered to the Senior Class at Harvard a series of lectures on Spanish literature, and, to divert and entertain him during a period of discouragement and of suffering from his eyes, proposed to read the lectures to him. He was so delighted with the subject that he immediately began the study of the language with the result that the remainder of his life was

devoted to Spanish subjects. Prescott had married, in 1820, to Miss Susan Amory, the daughter of a cultivated and successful Boston merchant, and of the marriage he said, near the close of his life, "contrary to the assertion of a French philosopher who says that the most fortunate husband finds reason to regret his condition at least once in twenty-four hours,-I may truly say that I have found no such day in the quarter of a century that Providence has spared us to each other." Mrs. Prescott was devoted to her husband, and until his death in 1859, was his continual support, adviser and assistant.

The account of his method of composition is told in one of his letters: "In the Christmas of 1837 my first work, "The History of Ferdinand and Isabella,' was given to the world. I obtained the services of a reader who knew no language but his own, (English). I taught him to pronounce Castilian in a manner suited, I sus

pect, more to my ear than to that of a Spaniard, and we began our wearisome journey through Mariana's noble (Spanish) history. I cannot even now call to mind without a smile the tedious hours in which, seated under some old trees in my country residence, we pursued our slow and melancholy way over pages which afforded no glimmering of light to him, and from which the light came dimly struggling to me through a half intelligible vocabulary. But in a few weeks the light became stronger, and I was cheered by the consciousness of my own improvement, and when we had toiled our way through seven quartos, I found I could understand the book when read about two-thirds as fast as ordinary English. My reader's office required the more patience; he had not even this result to cheer him in his labor. I now felt that the great difficulty could be overcome, and I obtained the services of a reader whose acquaintance with modern and ancient tongues supplied,

as far as it could be supplied, the deficiency of eyesight on my part. But though in this way I could examine various authorities, it was not easy to arrange in my mind the results of my reading drawn from different and often contradictory accounts. To do this I dictated copious notes as I went along, and when I had read enough for a chapter (from thirty to forty, and sometimes fifty pages in length), I had a mass of memoranda in my own language, which would easily bring before me in one view, the fruit of my researches. These notes were carefully read to me, and while my recent studies were fresh in my recollection, I ran over the whole of any intended chapter in my mind. This process I repeated at least half a dozen times, so that when I finally put my pen to paper it ran off pretty glibly for it was an effort of memory rather than composition.

Writing presented me a difficulty even greater than reading. Thierry, the famous blind historian of the Norman conquest, advised me to cultivate dictation; but I usually preferred a substitute that I found in a writing-case made for the blind which I procured in London, forty years since. It consists of a frame of the size of a sheet of paper, traversed by brass wires, as many as lines are wanted on the page, and with a sheet of carbonated paper, such as is used for getting duplicates, pasted on the reverse side. With an ivory or agate stylus the writer traces his characters between the wires on the carbonated sheet, making indelible marks, which he cannot see, on the white page below. This treadmill operation has its defects; and I have repeatedly supposed I had accomplished a good page, and was proceeding in all the glow of composition to go ahead, when I found I had forgotten to insert a sheet of writing-paper below, that my labor had all been thrown away, and that the leaf looked as blank as myself. Notwithstanding these and other whimsical distresses of the kind, I have found my writing-case my best friend in my lonely hours, and with it have written nearly all that I have sent into the world the last forty years.

Prescott's writings were successful from the first. Translations of the "History of Ferdinand and Isabella" appeared within a few years in French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian, and it is surely no wonder that the author took up with a good heart the preparation of a "History of the Conquest of Mexico," and then a "History of the Conquest of Peru," both of which were received with the same appreciation that had rewarded his first published work.

He had spent some time abroad before his marriage, partly in the hope of benefitting his eyesight. In 1850 he again visited England and spent some time on the continent. He wrote a number of miscellaneous articles for magazines and reviews, and published in 1855, two, and in 1858 the third volume of his uncompleted "History of the Reign of Philip II., King of Spain." This, had he lived to complete it, would doubtless have been his greatest work. It was received with such favor that six months after the publication of the first two volumes, eight thousand copies had been sold and the sales of his other works had been so stimulated as to bring the total up to thirty thousand volumes during that time, which yielded the author the substantial royalty of seventeen thousand dollars.

A slight stroke of paralysis had already enfeebled him, and a second terminated his life on the 28th of January, 1859. His wife, one daughter, and two sons survived him.

Few men have combined so many engaging qualities. His blindness had made no change in his appearance, and he was thought to be one of the handsomest men of his time. His cheerfulness of disposition was so great that at the time of his most intense suffering he addressed those who cared for him with such brightness and consideration that one might have thought their positions reversed. The personal friends who were won by his grace of manner and by the sterling worth of his character have nearly all passed away, but the hope that he early expressed, "to produce something which posterity would not willingly let die," was most abundantly realized.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF TEZCUCO.

(FROM HISTORY OF CONQUEST OF MEXICO, 1843.)

HE first measure of Nezahualcoyotl, on criminal matters, receiving appeals from the lower returning to his dominions, was a general tribunals of the provinces, which were obliged to amnesty. It was his maxim that a make a full report, every four months, or eighty days, monarch might punish, but revenge was unworthy of their own proceedings to this higher judicature. of him." In the present instance he was averse In all these bodies, a certain number of citizens were even to punish, and not only freely pardoned his allowed to have seats with the nobles and professional rebel nobles, but conferred on some, who had most dignitaries. There was, however, another body, a deeply offended, posts of honor and confidence. council of state, for aiding the king in the dispatch Such conduct was doubtless politic, especially as of business, and advising him in matters of importance, their alienation was owing probably, much more to which was drawn altogether from the highest order fear of the usurper than to any disaffection towards of chiefs. It consisted of fourteen members; and himself. But there are some acts of policy which a they had seats provided for them at the royal table. magnanimous spirit only can execute. Lastly, there was an extraordinary tribunal, called The restored monarch next set about repairing the the council of music, but which differing from the damages sustained under the late misrule, and reviv- import of its name, was devoted to the encourageing, or rather remodelling, the various departments ment of science and art. Works on astronomy, of government. He framed a concise, but compre-chronology, history or any other science, were required hensive, code of laws, so well suited, it was thought, to be submitted to its judgment, before they could to the exigencies of the times, that it was adopted be made public. This censorial power was of some as their own by the two other members of the triple alliance. It was written in blood, and entitled the author to be called the Draco rather than "the Solon of Anahuac," as he is fondly styled by his admirers. Humanity is one of the best fruits of refinement. It is only with increasing civilization that the legislator studies to economize human suffering, even for the guilty; to devise penalties not so much by way of punishment for the past as of reformation for the future.

He divided the burden of the government among a number of departments, as the council of war, the council of finance, the council of justice. This last was a court of supreme authority, both in civil and

moment, at least with regard to the historical department, where the wilful perversion of truth was made a capital offence by the bloody code of Nezahualcoyotl. Yet a Tezcucan author must have been a bungler, who could not elude a conviction under the cloudy veil of hieroglyphics. This body, which was drawn from the best instructed persons in the kingdom, with little regard to rank, had supervision of all the productions of art, and the nicer fabrics. decided on the qualifications of the professors in the various branches of science, on the fidelity of their instructions to their pupils, the deficiency of which was severely punished. and it instituted examinations of these latter. In short, it was a general board of

It

education for the country. On stated days, histori-] on the vanities and mutability of human life.—a cal compositions, and poems treating of moral or topic very natural for a monarch who had himself traditional topics, were recited before it by their experienced the strangest mutations of fortune. authors. Seats were provided for the three crowned heads of the empire, who deliberated with the other members on the respective merits of the pieces, and distributed prizes of value to the successful competitors.

The influence of this academy must have been most propitious to the capital, which became the nursery not only of such sciences as could be compassed by the scholarship of the period, but of various useful and ornamental arts. Its historians, orators, and poets were celebrated throughout the country. Its archives, for which accommodations were provided in the royal palaces, were stored with the records of primitive ages. Its idiom, more polished than the Mexican, was, indeed, the purest of all the Nahuatlae dialects, and continued, long after the Conquest, to be that in which the best productions of the native races were composed. Tezcuco claimed the glory of being the Athens of the Western world.

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There is mingled in the lament of the Tezcucan bard, however, an Epicurean philosophy, which seeks relief from the fears of the future in the joys of the present. Banish care," he says: "if there are bounds to pleasure, the saddest of life must also have an end. Then weave the chaplet of flowers, and sing thy songs in praise of the all-powerful God; for the glory of this world soon fadeth away. Rejoice in the green freshness of thy spring; for the day will come when thou shalt sigh for these joys in vain; when the sceptre shall pass from thy hands, thy servants shall wander desolate in thy courts, thy sons, and the sons of thy nobles, shall drink the dregs of distress, and all the pomp of thy victories and triumphs shall live only in their recollection. Yet the remembrance of the just shall not pass away from the nations, and the good thou hast done shall ever be held in honor. The goods of this life, its glories and its riches, are but lent to us, its substance is but an illusory shadow, and the things of to-day shall change on the coming of the morrow. Then gather the fairest flowers from thy gardens, to bind round thy brow, and seize the joys of the present ere they perish.”

Among the most illustrious of her bards was the emperor himself, for the Tezcucan writers claim this title for their chief, as head of the imperial alliance. He doubtless appeared as a competitor before that very academy where he so often sat as a critic. But the hours of the Tezcucan monarch were not Many of his odes descended to a late generation, and all passed in idle dalliance with the Muse, nor in the are still preserved, perhaps, in some of the dusty re- sober contemplations of philosophy, as at a later positories of Mexico or Spain. The historian period. In the freshness of youth and early manIxtlilxochitl has left a translation, in Castilian, of one hood he led the allied armies in their annual expediof the poems of his royal ancestor. It is not easy tions. which were certain to result in a wider extent to render his version into corresponding English of territory to the empire. In the intervals of peace rhyme, without the perfume of the original escaping he fostered those productive arts which are the surest in this double filtration. They remind one of the sources of public prosperity. He encouraged agririch breathings of Spanish-Arab poetry, in which an culture above all; and there was scarcely a spot so ardent imagination is tempered by a not unpleasing rude, or a steep so inaccessible, as not to confess the and moral melancholy. But, though sufficiently power of cultivation. The land was covered with a florid in diction, they are generally free from the busy population, and towns and cities sprang up in meretricious ornaments and hyperbole with which the places since deserted or dwindled into miserable vilminstrelsy of the East is usually tainted. They turn | lages.