more certainty to his language. Accordingly, we have not here to chronicle a decay of power, but its freer and more vigorous expression. Mr. Prescott's leading excellence is that healthy objectiveness of mind which enables him to represent persons and events in their just relations. Of all his histories, we think that the present, while it illustrates this characteristic merit, approaches nearest to the truth of things, and presents them with the most clearness and vividness. The scenery, characters, incidents, with which his history deals, are all conceived with singular intensity, and appear on his page instinct with their peculiar life. The book, on this very account, has been charged in some quarters with exaggeration, with giving more importance to the subject than its relative position in history will warrant. This objection we consider as implying its greatest praise. We admit that the Conquest of Peru does not take that place in the history of the world, as commonly written, which it assumes in Mr. Prescott's narrative; but we think that history, as commonly written, conveys but a feeble notion of persons and events. Undoubtedly the wars between Charles V. and Francis I. were more important than the skirmishes of the Spaniards with the Peruvians: but we by no means acknowledge that this is indicated in Robertson; and we think it a strange blunder of criticism to demand that the historian shall place his work in relation to other histories, instead of making it a mirror of his subject; and, because the usual description of the battle of Pavia conveys no idea of an engagement, require that the account of the capture of Atahualpa shall convey no idea of a massacre. The truth is, Mr. Prescott has done, in this matter, all that criticism can sensibly desire, in observing the natural relations of the characters and events with which he deals, and in varying the intensity of his representation with the varying importance of the different parts of his History. If he had capriciously given prominence to some things which would naturally fall in the background, or exaggerated others out of their proper connections, his work would have been inconsistent with the truth, and justly amenable to criticism; but, instead of this, he has reproduced, with vivid accuracy, the whole course of the conquest, solicitous only to convey clear impressions of actual things, and to print them on the mind in their true character and vital relations. If in doing this he has shown more force of conception and felicity of narration than the class of dignified historians; if he has avoided all verbal forms and barren generalities in the surrender of his mind to the objects which impressed it; if, in short, he has been more desirous to exhibit his subject than to make a show of himself, we protest against his being judged by rules which he does not pretend to follow, and having his excellence tested by principles drawn from the defects of other historians. Indeed, the great merit of the work consists in its representing a portion of universal history as a living, appreciable reality. The comparative narrowness of the subject, and fewness of the characters, enabled him to perform this with the greater completeness. There was less room for generalization, and more for individualization; more space for pictures, and less for propositions. Accordingly, everything is realized; everything stands out in its distinct shape and dimensions, and moves on with the general movement of the narration. We become acquainted, not only with the leaders, but with their individual followers; discerning their motives, the complex action of their passions, the strange jumble of ferocity, valor, superstition, and diabolism, which went to make up their characters. It must be confessed, we are placed in the company of a herd of graceless rascals, who, with all their valorous vice and heroic baseness, richly deserve the gallows; but we are still not among demons or monstrosities, but among bad men. It is human nature, we perceive, though human nature in a form so perverted as to make us almost ashamed of it. An insight so vivid into the character of the soldiers of Pizarro and Almagro, and of the conventional morality of the age, gives us a knowledge of the period which we can easily apply to persons of more historical importance, and events of greater magnitude. In Peru we have, as it were, a microcosm, wherein we can see Catholic Europe as it was at the commencement of the sixteenth century; the little world is a fair diminutive of the great world, and more comprehensible from its compression. Its study enables us to understand somewhat the nature of that moral confusion which springs from a violation of eternal laws; from the skirmishes of Pizarro we can infer the character of those awful wars which we read of in history with so even a pulse; and from the cruelty and rapacity of the Spaniards we see how thin is often the partition which separates the regular soldier from the proficient in rapine, massacre, and lust. We believe, if history were written throughout with this truth to things, that, in increasing our knowledge, it would improve our moral judgments. The reason that the gigantic vices of the powerful do not commonly draw down upon their heads a corresponding load of infamy, is owing to the feebleness with which those vices are commonly conceived. We are sensible of the energies such men display, and glow in the recital of their exploits; but we overlook the guilt and baseness of the means they often employ. In order that a historian should rightly affect us in this matter, it is not necessary that he should set certain commonplaces at stated distances in his narrative, declaring how naughty it is for men to cut each other's throats and blow out each other's brains; but it is important that, in representing a battle, he should make us realize the sufferings it occasions, and the demoniacal passions it unleashes. This cannot be done by expressing the dead and wounded in a row of figures. We have read accounts of Austerlitz and Leipsic which inspired us with less sympathy than the account given by Mr. Prescott of some contest where hardly a hundred were killed. In the "Conquest of Peru" we gain some notion of the fathomless baseness of brazen selfishness and rapacity, and no great energies developed by the conquerors can possibly lift it into respect. If the contemplation urges us to fix a darker and more indelible brand of reprobation on the impudent enormities of all public criminals, of all robbers and murderers on a great scale, there will be some check given to that absurd apotheosis of colossal depravity, that idolatry of great men who have warred against the interest of the race, which now fills the temple of fame with Titans from the shambles, and inspires emulation instead of horror among the energetic spirits of every age. It seems to us that Mr. Prescott thus produces morality of effect by truth of representation. This is as much better than moralizing, as the perfume which escapes from a rose is better than rose-water. If the historian has the heart and brain to grasp the truth, he may safely leave the rest to the reader's moral instincts. But this power of truthful representation is not a common quality. It implies the possession of a healthy mind, with large powers harmoniously balanced; it demands capacity as well as conscience, freedom from prejudice as well as freedom from fraud. It is not ever the prize of good intentions. It balks even the honest and intelligent, when force of conception is not accompanied by a corresponding felicity of style. In the case of Mr. Prescott that combination of powers, analytical, reflective, and representative, which constitutes his truthfulness, is expressed altogether in the unobtrusive form of narration and description. The distinguishing peculiarity of the present work is, that all the processes of the historian's mind are suppressed, and the results alone given. By this method he has added to the interest of the history, but deprived himself of all that reputation which halfbred minds confer upon the show of judgment and argumentation. His narrative reads as simply and clearly as if it had cost no labor of thought and investigation. Many of its delighted readers will be but little impressed with the force of the mind whence it proceeded, and pronounce it almost as easy to write as to peruse. It may not, therefore, be out of place to attempt here an analysis of the narrative process, and indicate the various powers it calls into action. Such a course may have some effect in checking the presumptuous underestimate which undeveloped geniuses ever put upon finished works, which have been so artistically organized as to seem artless. |