And so will every reader think. Mr. Arthur Helps has essayed to write history before. The Spanish Conquest in America stands to his literary credit. But he has a way peculiar to himself in the gestation and parturition of his historical offspring. He explains, in the preface to the third volume of his Spanish Conquest, his obstetrical mode of doing this thing. It is thus accounted for:
"In issuing this third volume, I take this opportunity of making a statement, which perhaps it would have been well to have made before.
"The reader will observe that there is scarcely any allusion in this work to the kindred works of modern writers on the same subject. This is not from any want of respect for the able historians who have written upon the discovery or the conquest of America. I felt, however, from the first, that my object in investigating this portion of history was different from theirs, and I wished to keep my mind clear from the influence which these eminent persons might have exercised upon it. … Moreover, while admitting fully the advantages to be derived from the study of these modern writers, I thought it was better upon the whole to have a work composed from independent sources, which would convey the impression that the original documents had made upon the author's mind."
With this explanation, nothing more remains to observe. If he has founded a school in this method, or if his original plan upon which to write history will die out with him, is yet to be seen. The Spanish Conquest, by Mr. Arthur Helps, is in thick, solid, heavy form, and in volumes no less than four. Insatiate Arthur! would not one suffice? His moral reflections and his axioms have one merit, if the number of ages in which they have been in common use can make them venerable. From the Pyramids centuries may look down upon some of them.
In the Life of Las Casas, the author in the preface informs the world that—
"There are few men to whom, up to the present time, the words which Shakespeare makes Mark Antony say of Caesar, would more apply than to Las Casas:
'The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.'
At one inauspicious moment of his life he advised a course which has ever since been the one blot upon his well-earned fame, and too often has this advice been the only thing, which, when the name of Las Casas has been mentioned, has occurred to men's minds respecting him. He certainly did advise that negroes should be brought to the New World. I think, however, I have amply shown in the Spanish Conquest, he was not the first to give this advice."
This is the way Mr. Helps enters the lists to be his champion. We do not know where the evils of Las Casas live on—when the ossification of the good with his bones supervened. Instead of quoting Shakespeare, a few lines written by the great British statesman, George Canning, for the Anti-Jacobin, in his ode to the "New Morality." would be more applicable to Mr. Helps himself:
"Give me th' avowed, erect, the manly foe,
Bold I can meet, perchance avert his blow;
But of all plagues, good heavens! thy wrath can send,
Save, save, oh! save me from the candid friend."