The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 19, May, 1859 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics

by Various

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

A New History of the Conquest of Mexico. In which Las Casas' Denunciations of the Popular Historians of that War are fully vindicated. By ROBERT ANDERSON WILSON, Counsellor at Law; Author of "Mexico and its Religion," etc., Philadelphia: James Challen & Son. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co.

(SECOND NOTICE.)

According to the well-authenticated legend of the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, the Saint, as he lay upon the grid-iron, conscious that he had been sufficiently done on one side, begged the cooks, if it were a matter of indifference to them, to turn him on the other. Common humanity demanded compliance with so reasonable a request. We fancy that we hear Mr. Wilson, preferring a similar petition; and we hope we are too good-natured to be insensible to the appeal. We cannot, at this moment, indeed, think of him otherwise than good-naturedly. With many things in his book we have been highly pleased. The number, the novelty, and the variety of his blunders have given us a very favorable impression of his ingenuity, and have afforded us constant entertainment in what we feared was to be a drudgery and a task. We had intended to cull some of these beauties for the amusement of our readers and the personal gratification of Mr. Wilson himself. But, as children, gathering shells on the sea-shore, resign, one after another, the treasures which they have collected, and grasp at newer, and, therefore, more pleasing specimens, which are abandoned in their turn, so we, finding our stores accumulate beyond our means of transportation, and tantalized by a richness that made the task of selection an impossible one, have been forced to relinquish the prize and come away with empty hands. If there be, in the compass of what the author calls "these volumes,"—though to us, perhaps from inability to distinguish between unity and duality, his work appears to be comprised in a single tome,—a sentence decently constructed, a foreign name correctly spelt, a punctuation-mark rightly placed, a fact clearly and accurately stated, or an argument that is not capable of an easy reduction to the absurd, we have not been so unfortunate as to discover it. Mr. Wilson is a man who, to use Carlyle's favorite expression, has "swallowed all formulas." The principles that have generally been held to govern the use of language appear to him mere arbitrary rules, invented by the "sevenfold censorship" and the Spanish Inquisition, for the purpose of preventing the free communication of ideas. All such trammels he rejects; and, accordingly, we have to thank him, so far as mere style is concerned, for an uninterrupted flow of pleasure in the perusal of his book, adorned as it is with "graces" that are very far indeed "beyond the reach of Art."

We come now to those important questions which Mr. Wilson was not, indeed, the first to agitate, but which he has awakened from their profound slumbers in the bosom of the Hon. Lewis Cass and the pages of the "North American Review." We are not to be tempted into writing another "New History of the Conquest of Mexico"; but we shall endeavor to state with clearness those points on which the world has had the temerity to differ from the "high authorities" we have named. It has been, then, commonly asserted, and is, we fear, by the great mass of our readers still superstitiously believed, that, at the time of the discovery of this continent, there existed, in certain portions of it, nations not wholly barbarous, and yet not civilized, according to our notions of that term,—nations which had regular governments and systems of polity, many correct notions in regard to morals, and some acquaintance with Art and with the refinements of life,—but which were yet, in a great measure, ignorant of the true principles of science, little skilled in mechanics, and addicted to the practice of idolatrous rites. This assertion would seem to have some primâ-facie evidence in its favor. The regions in which these nations are said to have existed lie within the tropics; and it is a well-established principle, that a genial climate, a fertile soil, the consequent facilities for obtaining a subsistence, and the stimulus thus given to the increase of population, are the first elements of an advance from a savage to a civilized state, of the abandonment of rude freedom and nomadic habits, and of the development of a regular social system. This principle is clearly set forth and elaborately illustrated by Mr. Buckle; and we the more readily refer to this author, because he stands high in the esteem of Mr. Wilson, who, in order to prove his own especial fitness for historical composition, and the incompetence of all who have preceded him in the attempt, refers to a passage in Buckle, containing an enumeration of the qualifications which he considers indispensable for the historian. This enumeration includes all the attainments that have ever been in the common possession of the human family. Mr. Buckle remarks, with indisputable truth, that one historian has lacked some of these qualifications, another historian has lacked others of them. Mr. Wilson states that "each and every writer" who has preceded him has lacked them all. Mr. Buckle, by implication, excepts one person, as uniting in himself all the qualifications he demands. Mr. Wilson thinks he is the exception; but we are quite sure that the exception intended by the author was—Henry Thomas Buckle.

In the Old World, civilization, as all admit, had its origin in tropical regions. Across the whole extent of the Eastern Continent, races are found inhabiting the warmer latitudes, which are now, or formerly were, in what is popularly called a semi-civilized condition. No one, we believe, has ever been foolish enough to account for this fact by supposing that a single people or tribe, having attained some degree of culture, had diffused the germs of knowledge over so large a portion of the globe. Chinese civilization differs almost as much from that of Hindostan as from that of England or of France. The Assyrian civilization was indigenous on the borders of the Euphrates, and the Egyptian on the borders of the Nile. What is remarkable in these and in all the other cases that might be cited is, that in those regions civilization never reached the high point which it has attained in other parts of the world, less favored at the outset; that it exhibited a grotesque union of refined ideas and strangely artificial institutions, with customs, manners, and creeds that seem to the European mind abhorrent and ridiculous; and that, the internal impulse with which it started having been exhausted, it either remained stationary, without further development, or sank into decay, or fell before the hostile attacks of races that had never yielded to its influence. Now the civilization which is described as having once existed in America exhibits these general characteristics, while it has, like each of the others, its own peculiar traits. If the discoverers had made a different report, we might have been led to suppose that some such state of things as we have described had previously existed, but had perished before their arrival.

Mr. Wilson, however, does not reason in this manner. He has found, from his own observation,—the only source of knowledge, if such it can be called, on which he is willing to place much reliance,—that the Ojibways and Iroquois are savages, and he rightly argues that their ancestors must have been savages. From these premises, without any process of reasoning, he leaps at once to the conclusion, that in no part of America could the aboriginal inhabitants ever have lived in any other than a savage state. Hence he tells us, that, in all statements regarding them, everything "must be rejected that is inconsistent with well-established Indian traits." The ancient Mexican empire was, according to his showing, nothing more than one of those confederacies of tribes with which the reader of early New England history is perfectly familiar. The far-famed city of Mexico was "an Indian village of the first class,"—such, we may hope, as that which the author saw on his visit to the Massasaugus, where, to his immense astonishment, he found the people "clothed, and in their right minds." The Aztecs, he argues, could not have built temples, for the Iroquois do not build temples. The Aztecs could not have been idolaters or offered up human sacrifices, for the Iroquois are not idolaters and do not offer up human sacrifices. The Aztecs could not have been addicted to cannibalism, for the Iroquois never eat human flesh, unless driven to it by hunger. This is what Mr. Wilson means by the "American standpoint"; and those who adopt his views may consider the whole question settled without any debate.

But there are some slight difficulties to be overcome, before we can embrace these views. Putting human testimony aside, there are witnesses of the past that still give their evidence to the fact, that parts of this continent were once inhabited by races who had other pursuits besides hunting and fishing, and whose ideas and manners differed widely from those of the "red men" of the North. Ruined cities, defaced temples, broken statues,—relics such as on the Eastern Continent, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the shores of the Ganges, mark the sites of fallen empires and extinct civilizations,—relics such as we should have expected, from a priori reasoning, to meet with in the corresponding latitudes of the New World,—lie scattered through their whole extent, proclaiming themselves the works of men who lived in settled communities and under regular forms of government, who had some knowledge of architecture and some rude notions of the beautiful and the sublime, who had strong feelings and vivid conceptions in regard to the agency of supernal powers in the control of human affairs, but who clothed their conceptions in uncouth forms, and worshipped their deities with absurd and debasing rites. Some of these remains being known to Mr. Wilson, on the evidence of the only pair of eyes in the universe which, in his estimation, have the faculty of seeing, he cannot treat them, according to his usual method in such cases, as fabrications of Spanish priests and lying chroniclers. How, then, does he account for them? He unfolds a theory on the subject, which he has stolen from the "monkish chroniclers" whom he treats with so much contempt, and which has long ago been exploded and set aside. He tells us, that these relics have no connection with the history of the American Aborigines,—that they have a different origin and a far greater antiquity,—that they are proofs, not to be gainsaid, of the discovery of this continent, at a very early date, by Phoenician adventurers, and of the establishment, in the regions where they are found, of Phoenician colonies. These ruins, he tells us, were Phoenician temples, these statues are the representations of Phoenician gods. In the comparison of facts by which he endeavors to support this theory, we have been surprised to find him admitting the testimony of other explorers. But they are, it seems, reluctant witnesses. Their inferences from the facts which they have themselves collected are directly opposite to his. "Proving our case," he says, "by such testimony, we have admitted their statement of fact, only rejecting their conclusions." Their proper business, it would appear, was to amass the materials which our author alone was competent to use. He encountered, indeed, a solitary difficulty; but this, in the most astonishing manner, has been removed. "Thus far," he writes, "had we carried the argument, but had here been compelled to stop, for want of further evidence; and the very stereotype plate that at first occupied this page, expressed our regrets that we were not able more completely to identify the Palenque statue as Hercules. At our publishers', however, the eyes of that distinguished Orientalist, the Rev. Mr. Osborn, chanced to fall upon a proof of the American goddess in the fourth note to this chapter, which he at once recognized as Astarte, represented according to an antique pattern. Her head-dress, he insisted, was in the ancient form of the mural crown, without the crescent, the prototype of that worn by Diana of the Ephesians, and so too, he insisted, was her necklace of 'two rows.'" Thus the chain of evidence was complete, and, for once, Mr. Wilson derived assistance from eyes not placed in his own head.

But, whatever distinguished Orientalists may say, undistinguished Occidentalists may be pardoned for inquiring when it was that this stream of Phoenician emigration flowed to the American shores, in what manner such an enormous body of colonists as the hypothesis necessarily supposes were conveyed hither, and what has become of their descendants. With an uncommon indulgence to our weakness of faith, Mr. Wilson condescends to meet these obvious questions. The time he cannot exactly fix; but it was "thousands of years ago,"—"before the time of Moses." To the query in regard to the means of conveyance, he answers, that at that remote period sailing ships were in common use,—as is proved by representations of them found in Egyptian tombs,—although they were afterwards superseded by galleys propelled by oars alone. The reason assigned by Mr. Wilson for this change makes a valuable addition to the stores of Biblical commentary. "The Greeks," he says, "appear to have been selected from their imitative powers, to perpetuate such of the arts and civilization of the elder world, as were to be preserved from that decree of extermination, pronounced by the Almighty against its nations. Commerce had been the chief cause of the total demoralization of antiquity, and of this, they were permitted to preserve only a boat navigation." Coeval with the decline of commerce and the extermination of sailing ships was the cessation of this Phoenician emigration to America. The colonists, having no longer any communication with the mother country, soon dwindled away and perished, in accordance with a well-known law of Nature. "Extinction is the doom of every immigrant population in an uncongenial climate (habitat) when migration ceases to keep up and renew the original stock." The same fate is impending over us. "In our own country various causes have been assigned for the recognized delicacy, which is steadily advancing in what may be called the pure American. The growing smallness of the hands and feet, the shortening of the jawbones, the diminution in the number of the teeth and their rapid decay, are matters of daily comment." In like manner, the Caucasian race is melting away in the colonies of Great Britain, in South Africa, Australia, and the West Indies. "In these uniform consequences the most obtuse cannot fail to recognise the operation of a universal law, whose primary effects are to diminish migration, and whose ultimate results are the extinction of the exotic population." We suppose none of our readers are obtuse enough not to be aware of the gradual shortening of their jawbones, a phenomenon especially noticeable in members of Congress and popular lecturers. As for the diminution in the number of our teeth, and their rapid decay, we need, alas! no Wilson to remind us of these melancholy facts.

What we may call the physical evidence in favor of the Aztec civilization having been thus disposed of by Mr. Wilson, we come now to his treatment of the written and traditional testimony, the accounts that have been handed down to us of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and of the condition of the country at the time when that conquest was made. Mr. Wilson opens his "Chapter Preliminary" with the statement, that, "in this work, the standard Spanish authorities have been followed as long as they followed the truth." This declaration excited, we confess, painful misgivings in our mind; for, if Mr. Wilson was already in possession of the truth, independently of historical research,—whether by communications from the spirits of the Conquistadores, or by any other of the easy and popular methods of solving obscure problems,—what need was there of his consulting the standard authorities at all? But we were somewhat cheered, when, a little farther on, we found him stating, that the writer who enters into these discussions must "con musty folios innumerable"; that "it will not do to denounce in general terms the venerable precedents [?] so constantly quoted by our annalists," but that "their defects and their errors must be shown in detail." For it does appear to us, that, if a great historical question is to be opened,—if a series of extraordinary events, hitherto believed by the world to have really happened, are to be denounced as fabulous,—if numerous writers, whose statements and relations have been regarded in the main as worthy of credit, are now to be rejected as liars and impostors,—it is indispensable that the works containing these relations should be carefully examined, that the statements should be compared and subjected to the severest scrutiny, and that the refutation should proceed, step by step, inch by inch, over the whole field of debate. Has Mr. Wilson taken this course? Has he met with clear and resolute argument the accounts which he denounces as "fabrications"? Has he diligently and carefully examined the "standard Spanish authorities"? Has he "conned musty folios innumerable"? Has he read all the works in question? Has he ever seen them?

We may divide these works into three classes,—not with reference to their different degrees of merit and importance, but as regards their accessibility and the relative ease with which they may be consulted. The first class comprises two or three works which have been translated into English; and these translations may be procured with facility and read by any one who has some acquaintance with the English language, though not acquainted with any other. In the second class we may place a considerable number of works which have been published indeed, but only in the original Spanish, or, in a few instances, in French or Italian translations. Some of them are rare, and difficult to meet with; others may be found in several of our best libraries. The third class embraces relations and documents which have never been translated, which have never been published, of which the originals repose in the Spanish archives at Simancas or the Escorial, or in private collections, jealously guarded, in Mexico or Madrid, and of which the only copies known to exist in this country are in the collection formed, with so much trouble and at so great cost, by Mr. Prescott. Now the writings which come under our first category Mr. Wilson has both seen and read,—to what purpose and with what profit we shall hereafter show. The publications comprised in the second class we feel very confident he has never read. The manuscripts, which come under the last head, we are morally certain he has never seen. That he has not seen them is capable of the strongest proof, short of absolute demonstration. That he had no acquaintance with Mr. Prescott's collection is a matter within our personal knowledge. Had he been in a position to obtain copies for himself, and had he availed himself of that circumstance, he would not have failed to proclaim the fact in his loudest and shrillest tones. Nor does he pretend that he has ever visited Spain, and had access to the originals. Indeed, we do not think he would have ventured upon such a step. He tells us, that, "besides the reasons already given for distrusting the correctness of Spanish statements, there is another, more secret in character, but not less potent than all combined—fear of incurring the displeasure of that tribunal which punished unbelief with fire, torture, and confiscation." If Mr. Wilson, as his language implies, stands in fear of "fire, torture, and confiscation," and if this is his most potent reason for distrusting the correctness of Spanish statements, we can readily understand why he should have chosen to remain on his native soil and write the history of the Conquest of Mexico from "the American stand-point." Lastly, Mr. Wilson makes no allusions to matter contained in the manuscripts which had not been reproduced in the pages of Prescott. He is careful, indeed, to tell us very little of the contents of these works; but he talks about them with the most gratifying candor, and in his choicest phraseology. He informs us, that "Sarmiento's History of the Peruvian Incas altogether surpasses that of Dr. Johnson's Rasselas and the Happy Valley." The history of Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas" is related, we believe, by Boswell. The great moralist composed his beautiful and philosophical, but somewhat gloomy romance, in the evenings of a single week, in order to obtain the means of defraying the expenses of his mother's funeral. The story is a touching one; but Mr. Wilson's comparison is so inapt, that we cannot help suspecting him of having had in his mind, not the history of Johnson's "Rasselas," but Johnson's history of Rasselas. We think it rather hard, that, having, in general, such a limited amount of meaning to express, Mr. Wilson should have followed the maxim of Talleyrand, and employed language chiefly as a means of concealing his thoughts.

Mr. Wilson nowhere asserts, in so many words, that he has had access to manuscript authorities. His mode of speaking of them, however, implies as much, and he evidently intends that this inference should be drawn by his readers. In a printed note, addressed to his publishers, disclaiming any intention of "assailing the memory of the dead,"—a disclaimer which was not needed to suggest the reason why his book, loaded with typographical blunders, was hurried through the press,[A]—he "insists on the lawyer's privilege of sifting the evidence—a labor which Mr. Prescott was incapable of performing, from a physical infirmity"; and he undertakes to prove that Mr. Prescott's "books and manuscripts were not reliable authorities." Now even "the lawyer's privilege" does not extend to sifting evidence which he has never heard; and if Mr. Prescott was "incapable, from a physical infirmity," of properly scrutinizing his authorities, it was the more necessary that Mr. Wilson, with his own wonderful eyes, should undertake the task. There is one manuscript which he might be supposed to have had a strong desire to examine. His book professes to be a vindication of "Las Casas' denunciations of the popular historians" of the Conquest. The work of Las Casas, supposed to contain these denunciations, is his History of the Indies. Mr. Wilson acknowledges that he has never seen this work; it has, he says, "been wholly suppressed"; and he is terribly severe on the censorship and the Inquisition for having been guilty of this suppression. But the only suppression in the case is, that the book has never been printed. The original manuscript may be consulted at Madrid. A copy of the most important parts of it is in Mr. Prescott's collection. Mr. Wilson might have seen that copy, had he expressed the wish. He did not, however, give himself this trouble; and we think he was right. The truth is, that, of all the Spanish historians of the Conquest of Mexico, Las Casas is the one who has indulged most largely in hyperbole. Writing, with little personal knowledge, in support of a theory which required him to magnify the ruin accomplished by the Conquistadores, he has exaggerated the population of the Mexican empire, the number and size of its towns, and the evidences of its civilization. It was on this very account that Navarrete, who examined the work with a view to its publication, came to the decision not to print it. We have little doubt as to the propriety of that decision; and Mr. Wilson, we think, also did well in sticking to Cass and "suppressing" Las Casas.[B]

[Footnote A: Author, compositor, and proof-reader were evidently engaged in a "stampede,"—the (Printer's) Devil having strict orders to make seizure of the hindmost. Part of a Spanish poem, borrowed, without acknowledgment, from Prescott, seems to have gone to "pie" on the imposing-stone, and been suffered to remain in that state.]

[Footnote B: Mr. Wilson would have been less unfortunate, if he could have "suppressed" the work of Mr. Gallatin to which he has the effrontery to refer as an authority for his ridiculous assertion, that the "so-called picture-writing" of the Aztecs was a Spanish invention. As Mr. Gallatin's essay is within the reach of any of our readers who may be inclined to consult it, we shall content ourselves with a single remark on the subject. That learned writer, who had made a real and thorough study of the Mexican civilization, (having obtained from Mr. Prescott the books necessary for the purpose,) was so far from denying that hieroglyphical painting was practised by the Aztecs, or that authentic copies, and even actual specimens of it, have been preserved, that he himself constructed a Mexican chronology which has no other foundation than these same picture-writings. There is one remark in Mr. Gallatin's work on which Mr. Wilson would have done wisely to ponder. It is this:—"The conquest of Mexico is an important event in the history of man. Mr. Prescott has exhausted the subject.">[

Our reason for believing that Mr. Wilson has never read the works, relating to his subject, which have been published only in the original Spanish or in translations into other foreign languages, is a very simple one. He produces no evidence that he has ever read them. Some of them he does not even mention. From none of them does he glean a single fact that was not ready to his hand in the pages of Prescott. Except in two or three instances, where he filches a reference from the citations made by the latter historian, he brings forward no statement contained in any of these books, either to support his own positions or to refute theirs. Why did he take from Prescott—to whom on this occasion he confesses his indebtedness—the facts in relation to the early life of Cortés, (we would he had borrowed the language as well as the matter!) if he had himself the means of consulting the works from which Prescott's account was derived? But it is unnecessary to pursue the argument; Mr. Wilson acknowledges that he knows nothing of the works in question. "For our purpose," he writes, "the standard histories of the conquest might as well be blank paper." We believe him; but had his purpose been, not "to denounce in general terms the venerable precedents so constantly quoted by our annalists, but to show their defects and their errors in detail," he would hardly have used them, as he has done, as mere wadding for the great gun which he was loading, and which has exploded with such terrible effect. His objection to the "standard histories" is, that their authors were Spaniards, ecclesiastics, royal historiographers,—that they wrote under the eye of the Inquisition and the censorship. Like objections would apply to the whole field of Spanish history. The reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles the Fifth, and Philip the Second must, therefore, be as fabulous as the conquests of Mexico and Peru. Accordingly, Mr. Wilson, when he wishes to study the history of Spain, declines to have recourse to Spanish writers. He goes to writers of other countries, and has a very natural preference for such as speak the English tongue. Besides that valuable work known among mortals as the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," but usually cited by Mr. Wilson, in an off-hand and familiar way, as "Britannica," he draws much upon a treasure of his own discovery, "a ponderous folio" of the seventeenth century, written in English by one Grimshaw, and containing a full and veritable history of Spain from the earliest epochs. He makes much of Grimshaw, styling him "our chronicler." He pats the volume fondly, and calls it "my old folio,"—just as Mr. Collier pats and fondles his celebrated old folio. To judge from some specimens which Mr. Wilson gives us, the venerable Grimshaw cannot have the merit of being very easy of comprehension. Here is an extract, just as we find it:—"About the year 756, at which time there were great troops of Turks beginne to disperse themselves over all Armenia, the which did overrunne and spoil the Sarrazin's country." And here is another:—"Over common, then, in Spain, and elsewhere, which nevertheless chastise the world in such sort, but that this sinne is at this day more in use than ever it was, to the dishonor of our God, contempt of his laws, and confusion of all good order." Apparently, Mr. Wilson, besides writing in a singular style himself, is the cause of singularities in the writings of other men. What is more worthy of note is the credulity with which he swallows the fabulous inventions of the "monkish chroniclers" when set before him in English earthenware. We would undertake, for a very trifling consideration, to furnish him with the Spanish originals of the stories of "Hispan" and "Hercules," and all the other absurdities with which his old folio has supplied him. From what source does he imagine them to have been derived? Does he think they belong to the stock of traditions in possession of the Anglo-Saxon race,—that Grimshaw got them from Bagshaw, and Bagshaw from Bradshaw?

Our argument in regard to Mr. Wilson's ignorance of most of the "standard authorities" will be strengthened by a review of the works which he actually has used,—or, to speak more correctly, misused,—and an examination of his reasons for selecting them. They are two in number. He can hardly be said to overrate the importance of one of these works,—the celebrated Letters of Cortes. For the events of the Conquest, and the first impressions made upon the minds of the discoverers by the aspect of the country, we could have no evidence of equal value with the dispatches written by the great adventurer from the field of his enterprises and during the course of the operations. Mr. Wilson does not, however, consult the original letters. His strong prejudice against everything Spanish would not allow him to do so. He has studied them through the medium of a translation; and the reason he assigns for his preference of this version is, that "it is better than the original." We have no doubt that it is better for Mr. Wilson's "purpose"; indeed, we fear, that, had it not been for the labors of the translator, Mr. George Folsom, the letters of Cortes would, like "most of the standard histories," have been regarded by Mr. Wilson as "no better than so much blank paper." Lockhart, by translating the chronicle of Bernal Diaz, has saved it from similar condemnation,—but only that it might incur a still more terrible fate. Mr. Wilson's theory in regard to the origin and character of this work is no less subtile than startling. According to the common belief, Bernal Diaz was a soldier in the army of Cortés, accompanied him throughout his campaigns, and, at a late period of his life, composed a narrative of the memorable events in which he had participated as an actor or an eye-witness. Writers who knew him in his old age have left us descriptions of his appearance and character. Mr. Wilson, however, holds that he never existed. The chronicle which bears the name is, according to him, a work of fiction, written by some Spanish De Foe, who had read the common narratives of the conquest of Mexico, but who had no personal knowledge of the scene in which his story is laid. What first excited Mr. Wilson's suspicions was the charming simplicity and apparent truthfulness which, in common with all readers of Bernal Diaz, he has found to be the distinguishing characteristics of the narrative. "A striking feature," he tells us, "in Spanish literature, is the plausibility with which it has carried a fictitious narrative through its most minute details, completely captivating the uninitiated. If its supporters were not permitted to write truth, they succeeded in getting up a most excellent imitation. In Bernal Diaz the alleged individual affairs of private soldiers are so artfully interwoven with the general history as to give the effect of truth to the whole. There being no fear of contradiction, this practice of inventing familiar details could be indulged in to any extent, while the beauty and simplicity of such a style fixes at once the doubting."

"Ah! si Molière avait connu l'autre!"—

Oh that Fielding had known Mr. Wilson! Partridge, a mere unsophisticated booby, thought simplicity the characteristic of Nature, and therefore out of place in Art. Mr. Wilson, a transcendental Partridge, thinks simplicity the characteristic of Art, and therefore out of place in Nature. He is more than ordinarily severe on Mr. Prescott for not having detected in Bernal Diaz these "striking marks of the counterfeit instead of the common soldier." "We differ," he says, "decidedly from Mr. Prescott." The difference seems to be, that Prescott regarded the appearance of truthfulness in the narrative of Bernal Diaz as primâ facie evidence of its truthfulness, while Mr. Wilson regards the same appearance as the most complete evidence of its untruthfulness.

But we have been anxious to discover some more definite and substantial grounds for Mr. Wilson's hypothesis. In a couple of closely-printed pages, devoted to the subject, he asks himself, again and again, the questions,—"Who, then, was Bernal Diaz?"—"Who, then, wrote the history of Bernal Diaz?" Failing to extract any reply from the singular individual to whom these queries are addressed, he winds up with the solemn and emphatic declaration, "On the evidence hereafter to be presented, we have with much deliberation concluded to denounce Bernal Diaz as a myth." For the evidence here promised we have searched with a patience of investigation which, if applied to the problem of perpetual motion or squaring the circle, could not, we humbly think, have been wholly unproductive; and these are the results. "The author of 'Bernal Diaz' says the march to Jalapa was accomplished in one day;—a proof that he never saw the country…. Cortez makes the ascent the work of three days, and says he did not reach Sienchimalen until the fourth day." The main discrepancy here is Mr. Wilson's own handiwork, as he has confounded the "Sienchimalen" of Cortés with Jalapa, instead of identifying it with the "Socochima" of Bernal Diaz. But so far as there is any real discrepancy, it may be sufficient to remark, in explanation of it, that Bernal Diaz professes to have written many years after the events which he narrates, and at a distance from the scene, while the letters of Cortés were written in the country, and while the events were taking place. On another occasion, Bernal Diaz represents the Tlascalans as complaining that they could "get no cotton for their clothing." "If this writer," says Mr. Wilson, "had really been acquainted with the tribes of the table-land, he must have known that the fibres of the maguey were, among them, substitutes for that article, and are even now used at the city of Mexico in the manufacture of some fine fabrics." We do not see how Bernal Diaz could be expected to know that the fibres of the maguey are now used in Mexican manufactures; neither can we comprehend how his statement, that the Tlascalans had no cotton, is at variance with Mr. Wilson's assertion, that they used the maguey as a substitute. We can imagine, however, that an old soldier, writing for the "uninitiated," might prefer to speak of cotton, for which he had a Spanish word, rather than enter into explanations in regard to an Indian substitute for cotton, resembling it in appearance; while it is not easy to believe, on Mr. Wilson's bare assertion, that an article in common use throughout the Valley of Mexico was wholly unknown to the inhabitants of the table-land.

These, and, so far as we can discover, these alone, are the proofs on which Mr. Wilson convicts Bernal Diaz of being a nonentity,—of having, like Rosalind in "As you like it," merely "counterfeited to be a man." As a natural sequitur to this delicious train of reasoning, he proceeds to take this nonentity, this "myth," as his guide throughout the narrative of the Conquest. "We may safely follow Diaz," he remarks, "in unimportant particulars"; and the "particulars" of the Conquest being, in Mr. Wilson's narration of them, all equally "unimportant," he is so far consistent in following Diaz throughout. Surely the Grecian fables will never grow old; here again we have blind Polyphemus groping in pursuit of cunning [Greek: Outis]. But we must be allowed to ask Mr. Wilson why he has not rather preferred to take Gomara as his guide. It is true that he entertains a strong loathing, a rooted aversion, for this harmless old chronicler, whom he calls always "Gomora,"—associating him, apparently, by some confusion of ideas, with the ancient city of bad fame, buried with Sodom beneath the waters of the Dead Sea. But, at least, he does not deny that Gomara had an actual existence, that he was a veritable somebody,—a reality, and not a "myth,"—that he was the chaplain of Cortés, that he had access to the papers of the great commander, that he wrote a history of the Conquest, and that this history is still extant. Mr. Wilson himself asserts that the dispatches of Cortés "and the work of Gomora are the only original documents touching the Conquest of Mexico, its people, its civilization, its difficulties, and its dangers." After this declaration, it is somewhat remarkable, that, throughout his narrative of the Conquest, while continually quoting from Diaz, he makes not a single reference to Gomara; and he even censures Mr. Prescott for having pursued a different course. How shall we explain this fact? Alas for Gomara! he wrote in his native Castilian, no Lockhart or Folsom had done him into English, and so he missed his chance of having his statements cited, and, possibly even,—though we should not like to hazard an assertion on this point,—of having his name correctly spelt, by the author of the "New History of the Conquest of Mexico."

It remains only that we should notice, as briefly as possible, the use which Mr. Wilson has made of his two authorities, the translations of Bernal Diaz and Cortés, which, rejecting all assistance from other quarters, he takes for the basis of his narrative. That narrative is constructed on a plan which, we venture to say, is without a parallel in literature. Like whatever else is strikingly original, it cannot be described; we can only hope to convey a faint idea of it by some random illustrations. To nearly every statement which he notices in the works before him Mr. Wilson offers a flat contradiction. When these statements relate to numbers, his method of treating them is a systematic one. He has picked out of Bernal Diaz, who wrote in an avowed spirit of hostility to Gomara, a pettish remark, that the exaggerations of the latter are so great, that, when he says eighty thousand, we may read one thousand. This piece of rhetoric Mr. Wilson receives literally, and makes it a rule of measurement, applying it with more or less exactness,—not, however, to the statements of Gomara, with whose work he is acquainted only at second hand, but to those of Cortés and of Bernal Diaz himself! Thus, in every computation of the number of the enemy's forces, or of the Indian allies who joined the Spaniards in their contest with the Aztecs, Mr. Wilson "takes the liberty," to use his own phrase, of "dropping" one or more ciphers from the amount. This mode of adapting the narrative to his own conceptions he calls "reducing it to reality." When Cortés—not Gomara, be it remembered—computes the number of his allies at eighty thousand, Mr. Wilson says, "Let us drop the thousands, and assume eighty as the actual number. We must do so often." When Cortés writes "thirty-five thousand," Mr. Wilson prefers to say "three hundred or so." When Diaz writes "twelve thousand," Mr. Wilson suggests that we should read "five hundred." Cortés says that he caused a canal to be dug twelve feet deep. Mr. Wilson, speaking as if he had been an eye-witness, says the canal was only twelve inches deep. In another place he writes, "Accordingly a force of thirteen horse, two hundred foot, and three hundred—not thirty thousand—Indian allies were sent to relieve that village"; merely leaving his readers to the inference that the number placed between dashes is the one given by Cortés. In a single instance, he admits the estimate of Bernal Diaz, who puts the loss sustained by the Indians in a battle at eight hundred; while Las Casas, whose corrections of other writers Mr. Wilson professes to "vindicate," says the loss of the Indians on this occasion amounted to thirty thousand. Las Casas also reckons the number of natives who fell victims to Spanish cruelty in America at forty millions. This wild estimate has been often quoted. Mr. Wilson, instead of "vindicating" it, as he was bound to do, triumphantly refutes it. "There never probably existed," he most justly remarks, "more than forty millions of savage races at one time on our globe."

It is not merely the arithmetic of his authorities that Mr. Wilson undertakes to rectify. When they describe a pitched battle, he asserts that it was a mere skirmish. When they speak of a large town, he tells us it was a rude hamlet. When they portray the magnificence of the city of Mexico, he says that they are "painting wild figments"—whatever that may mean,—and that Montezuma's capital was a mere collection of huts. Cortés tells us, that, in his retreat, he lost a great portion of his treasure. Mr. Wilson writes, "The Conquistador was too good a soldier to hazard his gold; it was therefore, in the advance, and came safely off." Cortés states, that, in a certain battle, he retired from the front in order to make a new disposition of his rear. Mr. Wilson replies, that Cortés did not go to the rear, because, though his presence was greatly needed there, the press must have been too great to allow of his reaching it. The presents which Cortés, while at Vera Cruz, received from Montezuma, he transmitted to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, sending, at the same time, an inventory of the articles, among which was "a large wheel of gold, with figures of strange animals on it, and worked with tufts of leaves,—weighing three thousand eight hundred ounces." The original inventory is still in existence. We have the evidence of persons who were then at the imperial court of the reception of these presents, of the sensation which they produced, and of the ideas which they suggested in regard to the wealth and civilization of the New World; and we have minute descriptions of the different articles, including the wheel of gold, from persons who saw them at Seville and at Valladolid. Mr. Wilson,—without making the least allusion to this testimony, which we cannot help regarding as of the strongest possible kind, intimates that the presents were of very little value,—represents the workmanship, which excited the admiration of the best European artificers, as a mere specimen of "savage ingenuity,"—and as for the wheel of gold, tells us that it "never existed but in the fertile fancy of Cortez."

In general, Mr. Wilson contents himself with the barest, though broadest, denial of the statements of his authorities, or with silently substituting his own version of the facts in place of theirs. But he sometimes condescends to argue the point. His logic is ingenious, but singularly monotonous. His arguments are all drawn from one source, namely, his own personal experience. The Tlascalan wall, described by Cortés and Diaz, can never have been in existence, for Mr. Wilson has been on the very spot and found no remains of a wall. Other travellers, it may be remarked, have been more fortunate. Cortés states, that, in a march across the mountains, some of his Indian allies perished of thirst. This Mr. Wilson pronounces "impossible," because he himself travelled over the same route, and did not perish of thirst, as neither did his horse, though the "sufferings of both," from that or some other cause, were great. One of the most remarkable acts in the career of Cortés was his voluntary destruction of the vessels which had brought his little army to the Mexican coast, in order, as he avers, that his men might stand committed to follow the fortunes of their leader, whatever might be the dangers of the enterprise. "This event," says Mr. Wilson, "has been the subject of eloquent eulogies for centuries. Among these Robertson is of course pre-eminent." We are here left in doubt whether Robertson is to be regarded as a preëminent century or a pre-eminent eulogy. However this may be, our author denies that the stranding of the vessels was the voluntary act of the Spanish general. He is confident that they were cast away in a storm. His "most potent" reason is, that he himself has "witnessed, not only hereabout, but elsewhere, upon this tideless shore, wrecks by the grounding of vessels at anchor." This he calls "submitting the narrative to the ordeal of proof."

However, as we have already intimated, it is seldom that his authorities are submitted to this "ordeal," which we admit to be a trying one. Usually they are informed that their assertions "rest on air,"—that they are "foolish" and "baseless,"—"wild figments," or "intolerable nonsense." Cortés states that some of his men, who had been taken prisoners by the Mexicans, were offered up as sacrifices to the Aztec deities. Mr. Wilson, after telling that their hearts were cut out, and their bodies "tumbled to the ground," complains that "to this most probable act of an Indian enemy, is foolishly added—it was done in sacrifice to their idols, though the very existence of Indian idols is still problematical!" Cortés, who had seen too many Indian idols to entertain any doubts of their existence, ought, nevertheless, not to have mentioned them, because to Mr. Wilson the matter is still a problem. Whenever that gentleman finds it inconvenient to "reduce" the statements of the Spanish historians to "realities," he omits them altogether. Thus, he says not a word of those fearful spectacles which struck horror to the hearts of the Spaniards in their visit to the teocallis,—the pyramidal mound garnished with human skulls, the hideous idols and the blood-stained priests, the chapels drenched with gore, and other evidences of a diabolical worship. Not unfrequently he fills up what he considers as gaps in the ordinary narratives. Thus, he pictures the dying Cuitlahua as "stoically wrapping himself in his feathered mantle," and "rejoicing at his expected welcome to the celestial hunting-grounds," where he "felt that he was worthy a name among the immortal braves." This "wild figment" from Mr. Wilson's "fertile fancy" was, perhaps, suggested by Theobald's famous emendation in the description of Falstaff's death-scene,—"a babbled o' green fields." On such occasions, Mr. Wilson explains that he is relating the occurrences "as they are understood by one familiar with Indian affairs." A remarkable example of this method of narration shall close our citations from his work.

The reader is, doubtless, acquainted with the tradition, said to have been preserved among the Mexicans, of a fair-complexioned deity, with flowing beard, who had once ruled over them and taught them the arts of peace, and, being subsequently driven from the country, promised to return at some future time. Predictions of his reappearance lingered amongst them, and were supposed to be accomplished in the arrival of the Spaniards. Mr. Wilson tells us that "too much stress" has been laid on this tradition; but we know of no modern writer who has laid any stress on it except himself. It has been usually supposed to be one of those myths in which nations partially civilized embalm the memory of their heroes. Mr. Wilson does not believe the Mexicans to have been partially civilized. He regards them merely as a horde of savages. Nevertheless, he believes that among these savages "tradition [in the form here noticed] had handed down, through untold generations, from a remote antiquity," the establishment in America of Phoenician colonies, their history, and their subsequent extinction. Nor is this the whole story. In order to strengthen his argument, he gives a new and corrected version of this tradition. "It told," he writes, "that pale faces had once before occupied the hot country, coming from beyond the great water. Perhaps with this were coupled also tales of suffering and wrongs; perhaps how cruelly they, the natives, had been forced, by these hard task-masters, to labor upon the truncated pyramids and their crowning chapels. With unrequited Indian toil, these men had builded cities and public works which still preserved their memory, though they themselves had long since perished, having fulfilled their allotted centuries. But with their decaying monuments they left a fearful prophecy, and thus it ran: that floating houses would again return to the eastern coast, wafted by like winds, and filled with the same race, to teach the same religion, and to practise the same cruelties, until they again finished their cycle, and gave place to others, such as the laws of climate and population might determine." When the reader, after perusing this extraordinary relation, recovers his breath, he naturally casts his eye towards the bottom of the page, in the hope of finding some explanation of it. He accordingly discovers a note, in which Mr. Wilson states that he has "given a little different shading to the famous tradition," but that "such, translated into Indian phraseology, would be the popular accounts." Now he had a perfect right to interpret the tradition as he pleased. He was at liberty to conjecture that it related to the Phoenicians, as the Spaniards were at liberty to conjecture that it related to St. Thomas. Of the two interpretations, we prefer the latter. Mr. Wilson, were he consistent, would have done so too; for how could the Aztecs, when they saw the Spaniards desecrating the Phoenician temples and destroying the Phoenician idols, suppose that these people were of the "same race," and had come "to teach the same religion"? We care little for his inconsistencies; but the feat which he has here performed, by his "shadings," his "translations into Indian phraseology," and his medley of "pale faces," "great waters," "floating houses," "truncated pyramids," "hard taskmasters," "winds," "climates," "religions," and "laws of population," we believe to be unsurpassed by anything ever perpetrated in prose or rhyme, by Grecian bard or mediaeval monk.

He appears to think himself justified in taking these liberties with the Muse of History by his anxiety to construct a narrative that should not overstep the bounds of probability. As if all history were not a chain of improbabilities, and what is most improbable were not often that which is most certain! But if, at Mr. Wilson's summons, we reject as improbable a series of events supported by far stronger evidence than can be adduced for the conquests of Alexander, the Crusades, or the Norman conquest of England, what is it, we may ask, that he calls upon us to believe? His skepticism, as so often happens, affords the measure of his credulity. He contends that Cortés, the greatest Spaniard of the sixteenth century, a man little acquainted with books, but endowed with a gigantic genius and with all the qualities requisite for success in warlike enterprises and an adventurous career, had his brain so filled with the romances of chivalry, and so preoccupied with reminiscences of the Spanish contests with the Moslems, that he saw in the New World nothing but duplicates of those contests,—that his heated imagination turned wigwams into palaces, Indian villages into cities like Granada, swamps into lakes, a tribe of savages into an empire of civilized men,—that, in the midst of embarrassments and dangers which, even on Mr. Wilson's showing, must have taxed all his faculties to the utmost, he employed himself chiefly in coining lies with which to deceive his imperial master and all the inhabitants of Christendom,—that, although he had a host of powerful enemies among his countrymen, enemies who were in a position to discover the truth, his statements passed unchallenged and uncontradicted by them,—that the numerous adventurers and explorers who followed in his track, instead of exposing the falsity of his relations and descriptions, found their interest in embellishing the narrative,—that a similar drama was performed by other actors and on a different stage,—that the Peruvian civilization, so analogous to that of the Aztecs and yet so different from it, was, like that, the baseless fabric of a vision,—that the whole intellect, in short, of the sixteenth century was employed in fashioning a gorgeous fable, and that to this end continents were discovered, nations exterminated, countries laid waste, evidences forged, and witnesses invented. And this theory is to be swallowed in one solid and indigestible lump, unleavened with logic, unmoistened with grammar, unsweetened with rhetoric. Let those whose appetites are strong, and whose olfactory nerves are not too delicate, sit down to the repast.

For our own part, we are quite satisfied with the bare contemplation of the fare. Our readers, also, we suspect, have long ago been satiated. They have dropped off, one by one, and left us alone with our kind entertainer. What more we have to say must therefore be bestowed upon his private ear. We shall speak with the greater freedom. We know the exquisite pleasure we have given him. We are sure that he is not ungrateful. When his book comes to a second edition,—with a change of title-page corresponding to some change in the popular sentiment,—we shall have to submit to the same honors which he has inflicted on Mr. Prescott and "Rousseau de St. Hilaire"; he will reprint our article as "a flattering notice,"—as the "Atlantic Monthly's estimate of his researches." We beg to call his attention to our closing remarks, which, indeed, may serve as a digest of the whole. When he has "translated them into Indian phraseology," (we regret that we cannot save him this trouble,) and "reduced them to reality," we shall take our leave of him, not without a mournful presentiment that the separation is to be eternal.

There are many points of difference between his work and Mr. Prescott's "History of the Conquest of Mexico"; but the chief distinction, we think, may be thus stated. If the foundations on which Mr. Prescott's narrative is built should ever be overthrown,—a contingency which as yet we do not apprehend,—that narrative would still rank among the masterpieces of our literature. It could no longer be received as a truthful relation of what had actually happened in the past; but it would be received as a most faithful and graphic relation of what had been asserted, of what was once universally believed, to have so happened. If the reality appears strange, how much stranger would appear the fiction! The truth of such a story may seem improbable; the invention of such a story would be little short of miraculous. Prescott's work, if removed from its place among histories, must stand in the first rank among works of imagination,—must be classed with the "Odyssey" and the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments."

But this book of Wilson's must, under all conditions, and in any contingency, be regarded as worthless. Be the story of the Conquest true or false, this contains no relation of it, this contains no refutation of it. Not content with vilifying his authorities, with impugning their faith, denying their existence, and mangling their names, he has disfigured their statements, corrupted their narrative, and substituted gross absurdities for what was at least beautiful and coherent, whether it was fiction or reality. His book is in every sense a fabrication. It is no record of the truth; it is not a romance or a fable, artfully constructed and elegantly told; it is—to use that plain language which the occasion authorizes and demands—a barefaced, but awkward falsification of history,—so awkward, that it has cost us little trouble to detect it,—so barefaced, that it has been a duty, though, of course, a painful one, to expose it.

Mothers and Infants, Nurses and Nursing. Translated from the French of A Treatise, etc., by DR. AL. DONNÉ, late Head of the Clinical Department of the Faculty of Paris, etc., etc. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1859.

When the young Count of Paris was at the tender age which requires the food that only mothers and their substitutes can supply, M. Donné, the author of this work, was called in consultation at the royal palace. He had a new way of examining milk through the microscope, and deciding upon its healthy and nutritive qualities or its defects, as the case might be. The whole world was full of the great question just then,—for the deep-bosomed dame of Normandy or Picardy who should be selected was to be the nurse not of a child only, but of a dynasty. So thought short-sighted mortals, at least, in those days,—little dreaming what cradle would be under the square dome of the Tuileries before twenty years were past!

M. Donné, as we said, was the man selected from all men for the task of choosing a nurse for the most important baby of his time. This is a voucher for his position at that period in the great medical world of Paris. He is known, also, to the scientific world by a number of treatises, with some of which we have long been familiar, as, for instance, the "Cours de Microscopic," with the remarkable Atlas copied from daguerreotypes taken by the aid of the camera. The present work is of a somewhat more popular character than his previous productions.

Little "Nursing" America is the father of Young America that is to be. And there is no denying that our new vital conditions on this side of the planet suggest some very grave questions,—such as these:—Whether there be not a gradual deterioration of the primitive European stock under these influences; and, Whether it is not possible that the imported human breed may run out here, so that, some time or other, the resuscitated tribes of Algonquins and Hurons may show a long shank of the extinct Yankee, as they show the Dodo's foot at the British Museum.

It is this contingency against which many intelligent and worthy persons are now trying to provide. The indefatigable Dr. Bowditch has made a map of this State of Massachusetts, showing the distribution of consumption in its different localities. That is the first thing,—where to live. We have been told an alleged fact with reference to a certain large New England town, which, if it were true, would raise the value of real estate in that place a million of dollars, perhaps, in twenty-four hours. We do not tell it, though mentioned to us by a celebrated practitioner and professor, simply because we are afraid it is too good to be true. At any rate, attention is beginning to be thoroughly awake as to the point of where we shall live. Now, then, how shall we live?

It is just as well to begin early. Infancy is too late. If men were dealt with like other live stock, a contractor might undertake to deliver at Long Wharf a cargo of three-year old human colts and fillies of almost any required standard of development and health, in five years from date. If only a cheap article were required, such and such parents would be selected; if the young animals were to be of prime quality, he must know it long enough beforehand, and be particular in his choice. This is plain speaking, but true,—as everybody knows, who studies the laws of life. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Given a half-starved dyspeptic and a bloodless negative blonde as parents, Hercules or Apollo is an impossibility in their progeny. Yet people look with infinite expectations of health, strength, beauty, intellect, as the product of $0 times {-1}$. The late Colonel Jaques, of the "Ten Hills Farm," knew ever so much better;—what a pity so much sound physiology should have been confined to "Caelobs," and "Dolly Creampot," and the likes of them!

Granted a sound, fair baby,—viable, as the French say,—liveable, or life-capable, and life-worthy. What shall we do with it?

A baby answers to the lively definition of an animal as "a stomach provided with organs." It lives to feed. It does not know much, but in its speciality it is unrivalled. The way in which it helps itself from the sources of life is a masterpiece of hydraulic skill. Once let it lose the Heaven-imparted art of haustion, and all the arts and academies of the world can never teach it again.

To manage this little feeding organism, with its wondrous instinct and capacity of imbibition, is the first great question after that of race is settled. Shall the mother's blood continue to flow through its fast-throbbing heart, and all the subtile affinities that bind the two lives be continued until reason and affection take up the chain where the link of bodily dependence is broken? Or shall it cleave no more to her bosom, but transfer its endearing dependence to a stranger, or learn to call a bottle its mother?

These are some of the questions learnedly, and yet familiarly, discussed in M. Donné's book. He has laid down many excellent rules for the physical and moral management of the infant, which the young mother can readily learn and put in practice. For the physician, his work contains many interesting facts with reference to the quality and the microscopic appearances of milk, as obtained from various sources and under different circumstances.

On one or two points our American experience would somewhat modify the rules commonly accepted in Paris. The nurse from the French provinces is evidently a different being from our Milesian milky mothers. So, too, the rules given by our own venerable and sagacious observer, Dr. James Jackson, as to the period of separating the infant from its mother or nurse, should be borne in mind, as laid down in his admirable "Letters to a Young Physician."

But there is a great deal of information applicable to children and their mothers in all civilized regions; and as we wish to start fair with the next generation, we are very glad to have so intelligent a guide for the management of our infant citizens.

Street Thoughts. By the Rev. Henry M. Dexter, Pastor of Pine-Street Church, Boston. With Illustrations by Billings. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1859.

If a profusion of introductory mottoes were any indication of the excellence of a book, this volume would be indeed a chef-d'oeuvre. On the page usually devoted to the Dedication, we have no less than six more or less appropriate quotations: a Greek one from Julian, a Latin one from Quintilian, a dramatic one from Shakspeare, a metrical one from Young, a ponderous philosophical one from Dr. Johnson, and a commonplace one from Bryant. In consideration of the number and learnedness of these certificates of character, we approach the lucubrations of the Reverend Mr. Dexter with profound respect.

In the days when controversial literature was fashionable in England, and the strife between Protestantism and Catholicism possessed some interest for the public, we remember with considerable amusement the manner in which the champions on either side conducted the attack. The Romish warrior would this month issue a formidable volume entitled "A Conversation between a Roman Catholic English Nobleman and an Irish Protestant." In this work the Roman Catholic lord had it all his own way; the Irish Protestant was accommodatingly weak in all his arguments, and the noble Papist battered him famously. But the Episcopal side was on hand next month with a volume entitled "A Dialogue between a Protestant Peer and an Irish Papist." Here the whole thing was reversed. The noble was still victorious, but he had changed his religion; and this time the Roman Catholic was feeble, and the Protestant stalwart. It is worthy of remark, however, that in both cases the nobleman was on the right side.

The Reverend Mr. Dexter thoroughly comprehends this ingenious method of attack. Does he, for instance, desire to impress upon the mind of his reader that it is in the highest degree criminal to wear kid gloves in the street, he, by a happy accident, encounters on his way to the office two persons conversing upon that important topic. He innocently eavesdrops. The individual who advocates the wearing of gloves is (of course) frivolous, fashionable, and feeble. His companion, who despises such vanities, is poor, though honest,—brawny and impregnable. It is wonderful how stupidly the kid-glove advocate reasons. The honest son of toil overwhelms him in a few moments. When a man talks so splendidly about the hard palm of labor being more useful to the world than the silken fingers of the aristocrat, who would have the courage to reply? The feeble aristocrat is (very properly) discomfited, and the curtain falls amid applause from the gallery.

The reverend gentleman seems to combine with his talent for eavesdropping a most remarkable good-fortune in the contrasts afforded by the various interlocutors whose conversation he overhears. Whether he is in a shop, or an omnibus, or on the sidewalk, he is certain to encounter a foolish person and a sensible person (according to Mr. Dexter's idea of sense) discussing some important social topic,—such as, Whether dancing is criminal, or, Whether people should wear stove-pipe hats. At the end of the discussion, the reverend listener appears in a paragraph as the deus ex machinâ of the drama, pats the victorious sensible boy on the head, and treats the foolish boy with silent contempt. It does not take much to win Mr. Dexter's approval. He goes into rhapsodies over a rich man who insists on carrying home his own bundle; while another purchaser, who is villain enough to desire his parcel to be sent to his house, meets with all the scorn that he merits. Our author takes cheerful views of life. He goes into State Street, and, struck with the great crowds of people, asks the solemn question, "Whither are they going?"—"To the open grave!" is his jocund reply. He, in fact, sees nothing but a job for the undertaker in all the health and life by which he is surrounded; and a file of schoolboys out for a walk would doubtless to him be nothing more than the beginning of a procession to Mount Auburn. The shop-keepers should beware of Mr. Dexter. He is the avowed enemy of nice coats, kid gloves, silk dresses, fine houses, and his proof-reader knows what other et ceteras which ignorant people have been in the habit of looking on as commodities useful in helping trade, and consequently forwarding civilization.

We really thought that this shallow philosophy had completely died out, and that every educated person had been brought to comprehend the uses of Beauty and Luxury. Mr. Dexter's "Street Thoughts" is a silly proof that there are men yet living whose theory of social ethics may apparently be summed up thus: Live meanly, be afraid of God, and listen at keyholes.

The Mathematical Monthly. Edited by J.D. RUNKLE, A.M., A.A.S. Nos. I.-VII. October, 1858, to April, 1859. Cambridge: John Bartlett. 4to. pp. 284.

The title of Mr. Runkle's Monthly is much drier than its table of contents. He has aimed at interesting all classes of mathematicians, has introduced problems and discussions intelligible to scholars in our High Schools, and has also published contributions to the highest departments of the science. Educational questions have great prominence on the pages of his journal; he gives frequent notes upon the best modes of teaching the elementary branches, and proposes to publish in a serial form treatises adapted to use in the school-room. Every number of the "Monthly" contains five prize problems for students. Nor are its pages confined to topics strictly mathematical. The number for February introduces a problem by a quotation from Longfellow's "Hiawatha"; another gives a list of fifty-five of the Asteroid group, with their orbits, and the circumstances of their discovery. The March number explains an ingenious holocryptic cipher, written with the English alphabet, with no more letters than would be required for ordinary writing, yet so curiously complicated, that, while with the key easy to understand, it is without the key absolutely undecipherible, even to the inventor of the plan; and the key is capable of so many variations, that every pair of correspondents in Christendom may have their own cipher practically different from all others. In the November and December numbers, a popular account of Donati's Comet was given by Geo. P. Bond, then assistant, now chief director of the Observatory at Cambridge. This paper has been issued separately, very finely illustrated by twenty-one cuts, and by two beautiful engravings. No papers, readily accessible to the public, contain, in a form so entirely devoid of technicalities, and so clearly illustrated to the eye, so much information relative to the nature of cornels in general, and in particular to the phenomena of this most beautiful comet of the present century.

The purely mathematical articles are all original, many are of great value, and some are, to those who understand their secret meaning, peculiarly interesting. A note of Peirce's, for example, in the number for February, proposes two new symbols, one for the mystic ratio of the circumference to the diameter, a second for the base of Napier's logarithms,—and then, by joining them in an equation with the imaginary symbol, expresses in a single sentence the mutual relation of the three great talismans in the magic of modern science. Another article, in the April number, by Chauncey Wright, contains a new view of the law of Phyllotaxis, approaching it from an a priori stand-point, and showing that the natural arrangement of leaves about the stems of plants is precisely that which will keep the leaves most perfectly distributed for the reception of light and air.

We are glad to learn that a constantly increasing subscription-list, both at home and abroad, shows, not only that Mr. Runkle judged wisely in thinking such a journal needed, but also that the editorial office has fallen upon the right man.

Memoir and Letters of the late Thomas Seddon, Artist, By his BROTHER. London: 1858.

Associations are fast gathering round the English Pre-Raphaelites. Those that come with honors and with death already belong to them. A permanent influence is assured to the new school by a continuance of vigor, and by the space which it already occupies in the history of Art. This little volume is of interest as being the first of its biographies. Mr. Seddon attained no wide reputation during his life, but he left a few pictures of enduring value; and his early death was felt, by those who best knew his powers and purposes, to be a great loss to Art.

He was the son of a cabinet-manufacturer, and was born in London in 1821. After receiving a good school-education, at the age of sixteen he entered his father's work-rooms. He had already shown a decided love of drawing. He had a quick perception of beauty, and excellent power of observation. His disposition was serious, and his conscience sensitive; but he had a pleasant vein of humor, and a generous nature. After some years of irksome work, he was sent to Paris to perfect himself in the arts of ornamentation, and his residence there seems to have confirmed his taste for painting, to the practice of which he desired to devote his life. But for the next ten years he was engaged in business, giving, however, his evenings and his few vacations to the study and practice of Art, and becoming more and more eager to leave an employment which was wholly uncongenial to him. At length, in his thirtieth year, he was able to begin his career as a professional artist. His experiences at first differed but little from those of the common run of young painters; but his fidelity in work, his conscientious rendering of the details of Nature, and his sincerity of purpose, gave real worth even to his earlier pictures, and brought him into relations of cordial friendship with Holman Hunt, Madox Brown, and others of the heads of Pre-Raphaelitism. After making a long visit, in company with Hunt, for the purposes of study, to Egypt and Palestine, and painting a few remarkable pictures, he returned home, and was married. Some months afterward he set out again for the East, but had hardly reached Cairo before he was seized with fatal illness. He died on the 23d of November, 1856,—just as he was grasping the fruit of years of labor and waiting.

The best part of the volume of memoirs is made up of Seddon's letters from the East. They exhibit his character in a most agreeable light, while, apart from any personal interest, they have a charm, as natural, vivid delineations of Eastern scenery and modes of life. He saw with a painter's eye, and he described what he saw clearly and vigorously, showing in his letters the same traits which he displayed in his pictures. Writing from his camping-ground on the edge of the Desert, he says,—"The Pyramids and Sphinxes, in ordinary daylight, are merely ugly, and do not look half as large as they ought to look from their real size; but in particular effects of light and shade, with a fine sunset behind them, for example, or when the sky lights up again, a quarter or half an hour afterwards,—when long beams of rose-colored light shoot up like a glory from behind the middle one into a sky of the most lovely violet,—they then look imposing, with their huge black masses against the flood of brilliant light behind."

Here is the first sight of Jerusalem:—"At length, about five o'clock, after expecting, for the last half-hour, that every hill-side we climbed would be the last, we came suddenly in full view of Jerusalem.—Few, I think, however careless, have looked for the first time on this scene, without some feelings of solemn awe. We read the accounts of all that passed within or around these walls with something of the vagueness that always veils the history of times that have gone by two thousand years ago; but however soon the feeling may wear off or be cast away, it is impossible, with the very spot before you where your Saviour lived and died, not to feel vividly impressed with the actual reality of what we have read of, and its intimate connection with ourselves.—But soon I was struck with the very erroneous idea I had had of Jerusalem. From the west it does not look at all like a city built on a hill; for, rather below you, at the farther end of a barren plain, you see nothing but the embattled walls of a feudal town, with one or two large buildings and a minaret alone visible above them. To the right the ground dips into the Valley of Hinnom,—but to the left it is level with the city-walls, and its surface is covered with bare ribs of rock running along it; and it is from this side that the Romans and Crusaders attacked. Behind the city, rather to the north, lay the Mount of Olives, and the long, straight lines of the Moab Mountains beyond the Dead Sea, stretching from horizon to horizon, half-shadowy and veiled in mist, through which they shone rosy in the evening's sunlight."

We have no space for further descriptions, excellent as they are. But we make one or two extracts relating more immediately to Art and to Seddon's views of the duties of an artist.

"I am sure that there is a great work to do, which wants every laborer,—to show that Art's highest vocation is, to be the handmaid to religion and purity, instead of to mere animal enjoyment and sensuality. This is what the Pre-Raphaelites are really doing in various degrees, but especially Hunt, who takes higher ground than mere morality, and most manfully advocates its power and duty as an exponent of the higher duties of religion."

"I hope I may be able to return to this place; for, to assist in directing attention to Jerusalem, and thus to render the Bible more easily understood, seems to me to be a humble way in which, perhaps, I may aid in doing some good."

Here is a portion of a letter written in England:—"The railway from Farnborough went through a most beautiful country,—by Guildford, Dorking, and Boxhill. While I was at Farnborough, on the bridge, sketching, a respectably-dressed man came up and touched his hat. After standing a minute or two, he said, 'So you are doing something in my line, Sir?'—'What!' said I, 'are you an artist?'—'Well, Sir, I cannot venture to call myself an artist, but I gets my living by making drawings. I makes 'em in pencil.'—I asked him if he took portraits.—'I does every line, portraits and all; but I don't get many portraits since the daguerreotype came in. No, Sir, my drawings are principally in the sporting line. I does portraits of gentlemen going over a fence or a five-barred gate. I does 'em all in pencil, and puts a little color on their faces, but all the rest in pencil,—d'ye see?'—'Yes; but do you make a good living?'—'Well, not much of that; I used to earn a good deal more money when I did portraits at sixpence each than I do now.'—I said, 'I suppose you begin to see that you can do better, and it takes you longer.'—'That's just it; you've hit it, Sir. I used to knock them off in a quarter or half an hour, and now it takes me seven or eight days to do a sporting piece.'—So I told the poor man that I would willingly give him advice, but I was afraid it would ruin him completely, for that afterwards he would have to take two or three months.—'Yes, Sir, I sees that; but I am too old now to learn a new line. But I find trees very hard; I can't manage them.'—So I sat down, and drew a branch of a tree, which he said was very much in his style; and I gave him some advice which I thought might help him, and the good man went away so much obliged."

When the news of Mr. Seddon's death reached England, it was at once felt by his friends that it was due to his memory that the public should be made better acquainted with the excellence of his works. An exhibition of them was accordingly made, and a subscription raised for the benefit of his widow, by purchasing his large picture of Jerusalem, to be presented to the National Gallery. The subscription was successful, and Seddon's fame is secure.

"Mr. Seddon's works," says Mr. Ruskin, "are the first which represent a truly historic landscape Art; that is to say, they are the first landscapes uniting perfect artistical skill with topographical accuracy,—being directed with stern self-restraint to no other purpose than that of giving to persons who cannot travel trustworthy knowledge of the scenes which ought to be most interesting to them. Whatever degrees of truth may have been attempted or attained by previous artists have been more or less subordinate to pictorial or dramatic effect. In Mr. Seddon's works, the primal object is to place the spectator, as far as Art can do, in the scene represented, and to give him the perfect sensation of its reality, wholly unmodified by the artist's execution."

Mr. Ruskin's judgment will not be questioned by those who have seen Seddon's pictures. But it might also be added, that such accuracy as he attained is by no means the result of mere laborious and conscientious copying, but implies and requires the possession of strong and well-balanced imagination.

We trust that the extracts we have given may lead lovers of Art to read the whole of the little volume from which they are taken.

Passages from my Autobiography. By SYDNEY, LADY MORGAN. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1859.

Aged sportiveness is not seductive, and we do not become slaves at the tap of a fan, when the hand that holds it is palsied and withered. We have in the volume before us the melancholy spectacle of an aged female of quality setting her cap at everybody.

When an old woman makes up her mind to be young, she invariably overdoes it. The gypsy horse-dealers, when they have a particularly ancient horse to dispose of administer a nostrum to the animal, which has the effect of keeping him continually in motion, and bestowing on him a temporary vivacity which a colt would hardly exhibit. Lady Morgan is unnecessarily frisky. The gypsy's horse, when the effect of the medicine has passed off, becomes more aged and infirm than ever. What a terrible reaction must have been the lot of this old lady, after all the capers she had cut in these passages from her autobiography!

A great, great, great, long time ago, as the story-tellers say, when novels were few and far between, and an Irish novel was a thing almost unheard of, a smart, self-educated Irish girl, of, we believe, rather humble origin, discovered that she had a knack at writing, and, having published a cleverish novel, called "The Wild Irish Girl," was taken up by great people, exploited, made the fashion, and had Sir Charles Morgan, a physician of some standing, given her for a husband. She continued to write. Her work on France made some noise, on account of its having been prohibited by the French government; and her subsequent book on Italy, if not profound, was at least sprightly. Her Irish novels were, however, her best productions. There is considerable observation, and some feeling, displayed in them. Her knowledge of Irish society is very exact, and her pictures of it very slightly exaggerated. "The O'Briens and O'Flahertys" and "Florence MacCarthy" are, perhaps, the best of her works of fiction. At this period, Lady Morgan possessed a rather interesting appearance, great audacity, and a certain reckless style of conversation, which was found to be piquant by the jaded gossips of the metropolis. She was taken up by London society,—which must always be taking up something, whether it be a chimney-sweep that composes music, or an elephant that dances the valse à deux temps; and she fluttered from party to party, a sort of Tom Moore in petticoats,—with this difference, that Moore left his meek little wife at home, while Lady Morgan trotted her husband out after her on all occasions. It is amusing to observe what pains the poor woman takes to persuade us that Sir Charles is a monstrous clever man. Betsy Trotwood never labored harder to convince the world of the merits of Mr. Dick, than Lady Morgan does to obtain a place for her husband as a learned philosopher who was in advance of his age, or, as she prettily expresses it in French; (she likes to parade her French, this excellent wife,) "il devançait son siècle." This mania for inlaying her writing with French scraps rises with her Ladyship to a species of insanity. "Est il possible that I am going to Italy?" she exclaims. How much more forcible is this than the vulgar "Is it possible?" When the Duke of Sussex comes into a party, he does not excite anything so common-place as a great sensation; no,—it is a "grand mouvement!" Praise bestowed on her is an "éloge." She would not condescend to speak of such things as folding-doors,—they are better as "grands battants." A change of scene is a "changement de décoration." Mrs. Opie, whom she sees at a party, is not in full dress, but "en grand costume." The three Messrs. Lygon look very "hautain." And while driving with Lady Charleville, instead of having a charming conversation on the road, her Ladyship has it "chemin faisant." Allons, mi lady! you prefer that style of writing. Chacun à son gout! Mais we, nous autres, love mieux the plain old Saxon langue.

If Lady Morgan had called this volume "Passages from my Card-Basket," there would have been some harmony between the title and the contents. The three hundred and eighty-two pages are for the most part taken up with frivolous notes from great people, either inviting her Ladyship to parties or apologizing for not having called. These are interspersed with a number of philoprogenitive letters to Lady Clarke,—her Ladyship's sister,—in which, being childless herself, she expends all her bottled-up maternity on her nephews and nieces. The little pieces of autobiography scattered here and there are painfully vivacious. The poor old lady smirks and capers and ogles, until one becomes sick of this sexagenarian agility. Paris beheld no more melancholy spectacle than that of poor old Madame Saqui dancing on the tight-rope for a living at the age of eighty-five, and displaying her withered limbs and long white hair to a curious public. We do not feel any particular degree of veneration for that Countess of Desmond "who lived to the age of a hundred and ten, and died of a fall from a cherry-tree then," as Mr. Thomas Moore sings. Well, Lady Morgan dances on any amount of literary tight-ropes, and climbs any number of intellectual cherry-trees. It is a sight more surprising than pleasant; and her Ladyship must not be astonished that the critics should not treat her with the respect due to her age, when she herself labors so hard to make them forget it.

Bitter-Sweet. A Poem. By J.G. HOLLAND, Author of "The Bay Path," "Titcomb's Letters," etc. New York: Charles Scribner, 124 Grand Street. pp. 220. 1859.

Unexpectedness is an essential element of wit,—perhaps, also, of pleasure; and it is the ill-fortune of professional reviewers, not only that surprise is necessarily something as rare with them as a June frost, but that loyalty to their extemporized omniscience should forbid them to acknowledge, even if they felt, so fallible an emotion.

Unexpectedness is also one of the prime components of that singular product called Poetry; and, accordingly, the much-enduring man whose finger-ends have skimmed many volumes and many manners of verse may be pardoned the involuntary bull of not greatly expecting to stumble upon it in any such quarter. Shall we, then, be so untrue to our craft,—shall we, in short, be so unguardedly natural, as to confess that "Bitter-Sweet" has surprised us? It is truly an original poem,—as genuine a product of our soil as a golden-rod or an aster. It is as purely American,—nay, more than that,—as purely New-English,—as the poems of Burns are Scotch. We read ourselves gradually back to our boyhood in it, and were aware of a flavor in it deliciously local and familiar,—a kind of sour-sweet, as in a frozen-thaw apple. From the title to the last line, it is delightfully characteristic. The family-party met for Thanksgiving can hit on no better way to be jolly than in a discussion of the Origin of Evil,—and the Yankee husband (a shooting-star in the quiet heaven of village morals) about to run away from his wife can be content with no less comet-like vehicle than a balloon. The poem is Yankee, even to the questionable extent of substituting "locality" for "scene" in the stage-directions; and we feel sure that none of the characters ever went to bed in their lives, but always sidled through the more decorous subterfuge of "retiring."

We could easily show that "Bitter-Sweet" was not this and that and t'other, but, after all said and done, it would remain an obstinately charming little book. It is not free from faults of taste, nor from a certain commonplaceness of metre; but Mr. Holland always saves himself in some expression so simply poetical, some image so fresh and natural, the harvest of his own heart and eye, that we are ready to forgive him all faults, in our thankfulness at finding the soul of Theocritus transmigrated into the body of a Yankee.

It would seem the simplest thing in the world to be able to help yourself to what lies all around you ready to your hand; but writers of verse commonly find it a difficult, if not impossible, thing to do. Conscious that a certain remoteness from ordinary life is essential in poetry, they aim at it by laying their scenes far away in time, and taking their images from far away in space,—thus contriving to be foreign at once to their century and their country. Such self-made exiles and aliens are never repatriated by posterity. It is only here and there that a man is found, like Hawthorne, Judd, and Mr. Holland, who discovers or instinctively feels that this remoteness is attained, and attainable only, by lifting up and transfiguring the ordinary and familiar with the mirage of the ideal. We mean it as very high praise, when we say that "Bitter-Sweet" is one of the few books that have found the secret of drawing up and assimilating the juices of this New World of ours.

The Mustee; or, Love and Liberty. By B.F. PRESBURY. Boston: Shepard, Clark, & Brown. 12mo.

The plot of this novel is open to criticism, and we might take exception to some of the opinions expressed in it; but it is evidently the work of a thoughtful and scholarly mind and benevolent heart,—is exceedingly well written, shows a great deal of power in the delineation both of ideal and humorous character, and includes some scenes of the most absorbing dramatic interest. The character of Featherstone is admirably drawn, and Bill Frink is a positive addition to the literature of American low life. We commend him to our Southern friends, as an example of one of the most peculiar products of their peculiar institution. The author of the novel has lived at the South, and his descriptions of slavery display accurate observation, candid judgment, and a vivid power of pictorial representation. The scenes in New Orleans are all good; and in few novels of the present day is there a finer instance of animated narration than the account of Flora's escape from slavery. The incidents are so managed that the reader is kept in breathless suspense to the end, with sympathies excited almost to pain, as one circumstance after another seems to threaten the capture of the beautiful fugitive. Though the book belongs to the class of anti-slavery novels, it is not confined to the subject of slavery, but includes a consideration of almost all the "exciting topics" of the day, and treats of them all with singular conscientiousness of spirit and vigor of thought.

Rowse's Portrait of Emerson. Published in Photograph. Boston: Williams & Everett.

Durand's Portrait of Bryant. Engraved by Schoff & Jones. New York: Published by the Century Club.

Barry's Portrait of Whittier. Published in Photograph. Boston: Brainard.

Almost one of the lost arts is that of portraiture. Raised by Titian and his contemporaries to the position of one of the noblest walks of Art, and in the generations following depressed to the position of minister to vanity and foolish pride, it has remained, during the most of the years since, one of the lowest and least reputable of the fields of artistic labor. The lost vein was broken into by Reynolds and Gainsborough, who left a golden glory in all they did for us; but no one came to inherit, and in England no one has since appeared worthy of comparison with them. In all Europe there is no school of portraiture worth notice; the so-called portrait-painters are only likeness-makers, comparing with the true portraitist as a topographical draughtsman does with a landscape artist. The intellectual elements of the artistic character, which successful portraiture insists on, are some of its very greatest,—if we admit, as it seems to us that we must, that imagination is not strictly intellectual, but an inspiration, an exaltation of the whole nature. To paint a great man, one must not merely comprehend that he is great, but must in some sense rise up by the side of, and sympathize with, his greatness,—must enter into and identify himself with some essential quality of his character, which quality will be the theme of his portrait. So it inevitably follows that the greatness of the artist is the limitation of his art,—that he expresses in his work himself as much as his subject, but no more of the latter than he can comprehend and appreciate.

The distinction between the true and the false portraitist is that between expression of something felt and representation of something seen; and as the subtilest and noblest part of the human soul can only be felt, as the signs of it in the face can be recognized and translated only by sympathy, so no mere painter can ever succeed in expressing in its fulness the character of any great man. The lines in which holiest passion, subtilest thought, divinest activity have recorded in the face their existence and presence, are hieroglyphs unintelligible to one who has not kindled with that passion, been rapt in that thought, or swept away in sympathy with that activity; he may follow the lines, but must certainly miss their meaning. A successful portrait implies an equality, in some sense, between the artist and his original. The greatest of artists fail most completely in painting people with whom they have no sympathy, and only the mechanical painter succeeds alike with all,—the fair average of his works being a general levelling of his subjects; the great successes of the genuine artist being as surely offset (if one success can find offset in a thousand failures) by as absolute and extreme failure.

As regards portraiture in general, the public may, without injury to Art or history, employ the painters who make the prettiest pictures of them; it doesn't matter to the future, if Mr. Jenkins, or even the Hon. Mr. Twaddle, has employed the promising Mr. Mahlstock to perpetuate him with a hundred transitory and borrowed graces,—if the talented young littérateur, Mr. Simeah, has been found by his limner to resemble Lord Byron amazingly, and has in consequence consented to sit for a half-length, to be done à la Corsair, etc., etc.; but for our men of thought, for those whose works will stand to all time as the signals pointing out the road a nation followed, whose presence and acts shall be our intellectual history,—it is of some little moment that these should be given to us in such visible form, that men shall not conjecture, a thousand years hence, if Emerson were really a man, or a name under which some metaphysical club chose to publish their philosophies. In psychological history, portraits are as necessary as dates; and one of the most valuable gifts to an age is a great portrait-painter,—a Titian, a Gainsborough, a Reynolds, or a Page,—which last has more of the Titianesque character than any one who has painted since the great Venetians lived, and few, indeed, are the generations so endowed.

Beside this full insight and representation of character, which makes the ideal portraiture, we have the less complete, but only in degree less valuable, apprehension which results from a point of sympathy, a likeness of liking in one or more fields of thought, a common sensitiveness, a common interest; and the rarer sympathy between artist and subject, of that intimacy and complete understanding of personal character, which, even where no great talent exists in the artist, gives a unique value to his work, but which, where the intimacy is that of great minds, gives us works on which no dilettanteism, even, makes a criticism,—as in that portrait of Dante by Giotto, to our mind the portrait par excellence of past time.

In the three admirable portraits whose titles stand at the head of our notice, we have in one way and another all of the conditions we have spoken of fulfilled. Rowse's portrait of Emerson is one of the most masterly and subtile records of the character of a signal man, nay, the most masterly, we have ever seen. Those who know Emerson best will recognize him most fully in it. It represents him in his most characteristic mood, the subtile intelligence mingling with the kindly humor in his face, thoughtful, cordial, philosophic. The portrait is not more happy in the comprehension of character than in the rendering of it, and is as masterly technically as it is grandly characteristic. An eminent English poet, who knows Emerson well, says of it, justly,—"It is the best portrait I have ever seen of any man"; and we say of it, without any hesitation, that no living man, except, perhaps, William Page, is capable, at his best moment, of such a success.

In Barry's portrait of Whittier it is easy to see the points of contact between the characters of the artist and the poet-subject, in the sensitiveness shown in the lines of the mouth in the drawing, in the delicacy of organization which has wasted the cheek and left the eye burning with undimmed brilliancy in the sunken socket, the fervent, earnest face, defying age to affect its expressiveness, as the heart it manifests defies the chill of time. It is an exceedingly interesting drawing, and one by which those who love the poet are willing to have him seen by the future. It must remain as the only and sufficient record of Whittier's personnel.

In the portrait of Bryant we have the results of an intimacy of the most cordial kind, of years' duration,—an almost absolute unity of sentiment and similarity of habits of regarding the things most interesting to each. Of nearly the same age, Bryant and Durand have grown old together, loving the same Nature, and regarding it with the same eyes,—the painter catching inspiration from the poet's themes, and the poet in turn getting new insight into the mystery of the outer world through the painter's eyes. Bryant's face has been a Sphinx's riddle to our best painters; none have succeeded in rendering its severe simplicity, and clear, self-disciplined expression, until Durand tried it with a success which renders the picture interesting evermore as a tribute of friendship as well as a solution of a difficult problem. The artist's hand was directed by a more than ordinary understanding of the lines it drew; it has not varied in a line from reverence for the verisimilitude the world had a right to insist on; it has not flattered or softened, but is simply, completely, absolutely, true. Bryant's face has an immovable tranquillity, a reserve and impassiveness, which yet are not coldness; the clear gray eye calmly looks through and through you, but permits no intelligence of what is passing behind it to come out to you. It is such a face as one of the old Greek kings might have had, as he sat administering justice. All this, it seems to us, Durand's picture gives. It looks out at you impassive, penetrating, as though it would hear all and tell nothing,—a strong, self-continent, completely balanced character,—unshrinking, unyielding, yet without being unsensitive,—concentrated, justly poised, and intense, without being passionate. The head is admirably engraved, though we do not at all fancy the way in which the background is done; it is heavy, formal, and unartistic,—but this may be matter of choice.