year or so returns thither again, how clear it all becomes ! So is it with mankind: the problems of that age are no problems now; what could not then be settled with all the noise of parliaments and of arms, in the after-silence of mankind has got its solution. Yet Mr Prescott does not live so far from the time he treats of that genius alone has power to recall the faded images thereof, to disquiet and bring it up again to life. Yet he lives so remote that he can judge counsels by their consequences as easily as by their cause; can judge theories, laws, institutions, and great men by the influence they have had on the world,by their seal and signal mark. In addition to these advantages, he lives in a land where there is no censorship of the press; where the body is free, and the mind free, and the conscience free-to him who will. His position and his theme are both enviable; giving an historian of the greatest genius scope for all his powers.

To judge only from his writings, Mr Prescott is evidently a man with a certain niceness of literary culture not very common in America; of a careful if not exact scholarship in the languages and literature of Italy and Spain. Perhaps he cannot boast a very wide acquaintance with literature, ancient or modern, but is often nice and sometimes critical in his learning. He is one of the few Americans not oppressed by the Res angusta domi, who devote themselves to literature; to a life of study and the self-denial it demands in all countries, and eminently here, where is no literary class to animate the weary man. His quotations indicate a wealthy library-his own fortune enabling him to procure books which are rare even in Spain itself. Where printed books fail, manuscripts, also, have been diligently sought. He writes in a mild and amiable spirit: if he differ from other historians, he empties no vials of wrath upon their heads. He always shows himself a gentleman of letters, treating his companions with agreeable manners and courtesy the most amiable. Few lines in these volumes appear marked with any asperity, or dictated in any sourness of temper. These few we shall pass upon in their place.

Within less than thirteen years eight volumes have appeared from his hand; the first evidently the work of many years, but the last five volumes reveal a diligence

and ability to work not common amongst the few literary gentlemen of America. Labour under disadvantages always commands admiration. How many have read with throbbing heart the lives of men pursuing "knowledge under difficulties;" yet such men often had one advantage which no wealth could give, no colleges and guidance of accomplished men supply-an able intellect and the unconquerable will: but Mr Prescott has pursued his labours under well-known difficulties, which might make the stoutest quail. These things considered, no fair man can fail to honour the accomplished author, and to rejoice in the laurels so beautifully won and worn with modesty and grace.

After this long preamble, let us now examine the three works before us, and see how the author has done the high duties of an historian. Treating of this great theme, we shall speak of the three works in their chronological order, and examine in turn the History of Spain, of Mexico, and of Peru, in each case speaking of the substance of the work, first in details, then as a whole-and next of its form. The remainder of this article will be devoted to the History of Ferdinand and Isabella.

To understand what was done by Ferdinand and Isabella, we must know what had been achieved before their time, must take the national account of stock. This Mr Prescott undertakes in his Introduction (Vol. I. pp. xxix. -cxxiv.), but he fails to render an adequate account of the condition of Castile and Arragon, and of course it is not easy for the reader to appreciate the changes that subsequently were made therein.

To be a little more specific: his account of the condition of the law is meagre and inadequate; the history of the reform and codification of laws poor and hardly intelligible (Part I. Ch. vI.); and though he returns upon the theme in the general account of the administration of Ferdinand and Isabella (Part II. Ch. xxvI.), still it is not well and adequately done. What he says of the Cortes of Castile and that of Arragon does not give one a clear idea of the actual condition and power of those bodies. He does not tell us by whom and how the members were chosen to their office; how long they held it, and on what condition. The reader wonders at the meagreness of this

important portion of the work, especially when such materials lay ready before his hands. After all, we find a more complete and intelligible account of the constitution, of the laws, and of the administration of justice in the brief chapter of Mr Hallam's work than in this elaborate history. Nay, the work of Mr Dunham, written for the Cabinet Cyclopædia, written apparently in haste, and not always in good temper-gives a far better account of that matter than Mr Prescott. This is a serious defect, and one not to be anticipated in an historian who in this country undertakes to describe to us the ancient administration of a foreign land. With a sigh the student remembers the masterly chapter of Gibbon which treats of the administration of justice and of the Roman law, a chapter which made a new era in the study of the subject itself, and longs for some one to guide him in this difficult and crooked path. With the exception of the Code of the Visigoths, the Fuero Juzgo, and the Siete Partidas, works of Spanish law, or treating thereof, are in but few hands: Marina, Zuaznavar, and Garcia de la Madrid can be but little known in England or America; for information the general scholar must here depend on the historian; considering the important place that Spanish legislation has held, the wide reach of the Spanish dominion on both continents, it was particularly needful to have in this work a clear, thorough, and masterly digest of this subject.

In speaking of the revenue of the kingdom, Mr Prescott does not inform us how it was collected, nor from what sources. (Introduction, Sect. I. and II. and Part I. Ch. vI.) We are told that the king had his royal demesnes, that on some occasions one-fifth of the spoils of war belonged to him, and it appears that a certain proportion of the proceeds of the mines was his-but there is no systematic or methodical account of the revenues. True, he tells us that Isabella obtains money by mortgaging her real estate and pawning her personal property (Part I. Ch. XIV.); afterwards it appears, accidentally, that two-ninths of the tithes, Tercias, formed a part of the royal income. (Part II. Ch. 1. p. 283.) We are told that the revenues increased thirty-fold during this administration. (Part II. Ch. xxvI. p. 484.) It is mentioned as a proof of sagacity in the ruler and of the wel

fare of the people—but we are not told whence they were derived, and it appears that in 1504 the single city of Seville paid nearly one-sixth of the whole revenue.* In a note he tells us that the bulk of the crown revenue came from the Tercias and the Alcavalas. The latter was an odious tax of ten per cent. on all articles bought, sold, or transferred. Mr Prescott tells us it was commuted-but how or for what he does not say. (Part II. Ch. xxvI. p. 438.)

Armies figure largely in any history of Spain, but it is in vain that we ask of Mr Prescott how the armies were raised, and on what principle, the modern or the feudal; how they were equipped, paid, fed, and clothed. He often dwells upon battles, telling us who commanded on the right or the left; can describe at length the tournament of Trani, and the duel between Bayard and Sotomayor-but he nowhere gives us a description of the military estate of the realm, and nowhere relates the general plan of a campaign. This, also, is a serious defect in any history, especially in that of a nation of the fifteenth century-a period of transition. He does not inform us of the state of industry, trade, and commerce, or touch, except incidentally, upon the effect of the laws thereon. Yet during this reign the laws retarded industry in all its forms, to a great degree. Soon after the discovery of America, Spain forbade the exportation of gold and silver, and, as Don Clemencin says, 66 our industry would have died from apoplexy of money, if the observance of the laws established in this matter had not been sufficient for its ruin." At a later date it was forbidden to export even the raw material of silk and wool. "Spain," says M. Blanqui, the latest writer on the political economy of that country that we have seen-"is the country of all Europe where the rashest and most cruel experiments have been made at the expense of industry, which has almost always been treated as a foe, managed to the death (exploitée à l'outrance) instead of being protected by the Government, and regarded as a thing capable of taxation, rather than a productive element." Restrictions were laid not only on intercourse

* Mr Prescott says near a tenth. This is probably a clerical or typographical error. The whole amount is given in the authority as 209,500,000 maravedis, of which Seville paid 30,971,096.

with foreign nations, but on the traffic between province and province, and a tax, sometimes an enormous one, the Alcavala, was collected from the sale of all articles whatever. "Members of the legal and military profession," says M. Blanqui, "affected the most profound contempt for every form of industry. Any man who exercised a trade was disgraced for life. A noble who ventured to work lost his privilege of nobility, and brought his family to shame. No town accepted an artisan for its alcalde; the Cortes of Arragon, says Marina, never admitted to their assembly a deputy who came from the industrial class. You would think you were reading Aristotle and Cicero when you find in the writers, and even in the laws of Spain, those haughty expressions of contempt for the men who bow their faces towards the earth, and stoop to smite the anvil, or tend a loom."

Mr Prescott does not notice the condition of the people, except in terms the most general and vague. Yet great changes were taking place at that time in the condition of the labouring class. He does not even tell us what relation the peasantry bore to the soil; how they held it, by what tenure; for what time; what relation they bore to the nobles and the knights. In Castile Mr Hallam says there was no villanage. Mr Prescott gives us no explanation of the fact, and does not mention the fact itself. In Catalonia a portion of the peasantry passed out of the condition of vassalage,—Mariana calls them Pageses, others Vassals de Remenza,-to that of conditional freedom, by paying an annual tax to their former owner, or to entire freedom by the payment of a sum twenty times as large. This was an important event in the civil history of Spain. Mr Prescott barely relates the fact. From other sources we have learned, we know not how truly, that no artisan was allowed in the Cortes of Arragon, that only nobles were eligible to certain offices there, and no nobles were taxed.

In all this History there are no pictures from the lives of the humble,-yet a glimpse into the cottage of a peasant, or even at the beggary of Spain in the fifteenth century, would be instructive, and help a stranger to understand the nation. Much is said, indeed, of the wealthier class, of the nobles, and of the clergy, but we find it imVOL. X.--Critical Writings, 2.

7