SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

The History of the Conquest of Mexico ; with a Preliminary View of the Ancient Mexican CiorWsation, and the Life of the Conqueror, Hernando Castes. By William H. Prescott. Author of "The History of Ferdinand nod Isabella." In three volumes Bentfey. Irmertorr, The Belle of the Family or the Jointure; a Novel. By the Author of "The Yonng Prima Donna," &c. In three volumes Newly. tkiscauairrous LrrEasvottr, loins end Old Trees associated with Memorable Event. in English History: By Mary Roberts, Author of "The Progress of Creation considered with reference to the present Condition of the Earth," Sec. With Illustrations from Designs by Gilbert, engraved by Follcard Harvey and Dation.

MR. PEESCOT'T'S CONQUEST OF anixico.

Tux excuse offered by Mr. PRESCOTT for selecting the happiest subject adorned by the pen of the historian of America, is the dis- covery of a large mass of original materials unknown to Dr. ROBERTSON. Several Spanish antiquarians have since his time been indefatigable in hunting out documents connected with the discovery and early conquests of America ; and, by the growing liberality of the Spaniards, Mr. PRESCOTT has been allowed free access to these collections, besides deriving some assistance from private individuals, among whom may be mentioned the Sicilian Duke of MONTELEONE, the present representative of CORTES. The extent of these collections may be estimated by the fact, that the documents procured from Spain relating "to the conquest and settlement of Mexico and of Peru comprise about eight thousand folio pages. They consist of instructions of the court, military and private journals, correspondence of the great actors in the scenes, legal instruments, contemporary chronicles, and the like, drawn from all the principal places in the extensive colonial empire of Spain, as well as from the public archives in the Peninsula." Mr. PRESCOTT remarks as a further reason for his publication, that ROBERTSON'S work is "necessarily brief," and concludes with the conquest; whereas in the volumes before us the author narrates the settlement of Mexico and the subsequent life of CORTES. He also introduces the whole by a review of the Aztec or Mexican history and civilization previous to the arrival of the Spaniards ; and completes this topic in the appendix, by an inquiry into the probable origin of Mexican or rather of American civilization. Mr. PRESCOTT has continued the plan he adopted in his History of Ferdinand and Isabella; giving as an addendum to each division a notice of the life and writings of' his principal authorities,—a capital idea derived from Grimm, who contemplated such a work 2$ a sequel to the Decline and Fall. hi a history of high pretension, the first question to be consi- deredis, what new information does it convey ? As regards the main subject of Mr. Parscorr's book, the conquest of Mexico, the reply to this question will be, Not much as respects the leading character of events, but a good deal in minute particulars. He has detailed Ronzarson—filled up the outline with circumstances ROBERTSON designedly omitted; for we suspect that the new documents relating to the history have more bulk than value, and that both the features and the expression of the principal events were existent in the authorities accessible to the first historian. For the reader who wishes minute information without the drudgery and difficulty of recurring to the original writers, such a. treatment is exactly adapted to meet his views. As supplying a want or filling up a vacuum, the present history of the Conquest of Mexico was scarcely necessary.

This is more peculiarly the case because, without being an imi- tator, Mr. PaEscorr is of the school of ROBERTSON; aiming at elo- quent and picturesque narration, rather than the sterner but drier philosophy of critical history. To say that in the quality aimed at he reaches his master, would be flattery, because we think Romirr- son tong° intervallo the head of his class. But had he rewritten the story of the:Conquest of Mexico, he could not perhaps have produced a better work than Mr. PRESCOTT. By passing_ lightly over lesser events, and omitting mittuter circumstances, ROBERTSON gave to his work an epic, almost a dramatic distinctness of plan and effect. His discriminating eye saw those circumstances, analogous to a principle in philosophy, or to NAPOLEON'S "given point " in war, which impart colour and character to persons and actions, and im- press the bystander as well as the reader, not so much by their outward forms as by their inner spirit. His glowing style was admirably adapted to the tropical richness and wild romance of his subject, whilst his judgment ever stopped short of the tumid or diffuse. His diction, laboured to faultlessness, (it has been said, by a revision of every sentence on a separate slip of paper,) seems to us to approach the perfection of that order of style,—full without overflowing, close without crowding : the attention is never tasked to apprehend too much, perhaps never put off with a sounding phrase concealing poverty of matter. But ROBERTSON'S history has other excellences besides these. His power of happy narration brings before us by a few masterly touches the essential character of every scene or action ; his reflections are sometimes so interwoven with the narrative as to become a part of it, or, by a judicious use of rhetorical art, represented as emanating from the actors ; and when the author appears in his own person, he seems more like one fulfilling a high mission than a writer exercising his trade. But great as these excellences are, they do not overpower the greater excellence of the grand design. The masses of the action, the leading stages of the career of conquest, are marked with the distinctness of the acts in a drama; and such is their im- pression, that when the particulars have faded by lapse of time,

the leading events are pictured in the memory, as the parts and proportions of a well-formed structure are present to the eye when distance has obscured the lesser parts.

But in the composition of so classical a work, constructed. for endurance, much subordinate though interesting matter must be Dejected, and many characteristic traits will escape. Incidents are to be considered not so much for themselves as their relation to. the general result ; circumstances, though curious and striking, may be out of place, or distract attention from the more important end ; and what may be called gesture and costume as opposed to

manners and character are beneath the dignity of this class of history, or too cumbrous for its march. Such omissions both voluntary and involuntary, can always be gathered up after any historian, at least after one who draws his materials from paint or picturesque narrators of the scenes they describe. And this Mr. PRESCOTT has done, besides using up such additional particulars as his new materials supplied him with. He has also done it in a clear, attractive, and animated manner ; and infused into his work a discriminating spirit, not shrinking from exposing and censuring the crimes of the conquerors, yet not indulging in vulgar invective. It is true, there are some defects as a set-off to this praise. Bs deals rather too much in reflections of undue length, or un- necessarily introduced ; his style, however pleasant and even effective, is sometimes too swelling, and, for the purpose of bring- ing out the minor particulars of the action, is rather too easy and. familiar for history, and better adapted to the half-truth half-fancy of a " Sketch-book "; whilst the writer, though not obtruded, is. sometimes too visible. There are also lesser blemishes, which most probably are attributable to an affliction of the author. 'Ile state of his eyes is unhappily such as to have rendered him in- capable of revising his manuscript, or even his proofs.

The introductory view of Aztec civilization, which gives a

general outline of the national history, an account of the reign and character of the two great monarchs immediately preceding the arrival of the Spaniards, as well as an elaborate description of the arts, institutions, and religion of the people, is about the most. popular piece of archmological exposition we have met with. It is more in the vein of ROBERTSON than the history ; indicating that the author would have produced a better narrative had he not felt a necessity for doing more than hia predecessor. The contemporary authorities, chiefly priests—the educated natives, who after the conquest took a pride in preserving the relics of their national character and glory—(somewhat, it strikes us, after the poetical fashion of "Let Erin remember the days of old ")—as well as the successive antiquaries who have since investigated the obscure, subject—have all been examined, their discrepancies estimated, their confusion arranged, their pith extracted, and the whole vivified by a living spirit. But the reader should be on his guard against. a too favourable view of the subject, arising, not from Mr. PRESCOTT'S implicit belief in his authorities, but his too close, reproduction of them. The only strictly contemporary evidencer we. have, of any value, is Coarse; for his follower Captaim BERNAL DIAZ was too ignorant and credulous, too much of the mere soldier, to be trusted as a witness about facts that are to settle questions of civilization. Even CORTES himself;, notwithstanding his penetrating ability, is obnoxious in some de- gree to a similar remark; for he left Spain when in his teens,, and his confined notions of civilized life must have been drawn from the Spanish colonists ; besides which, it was his interest to, paint society as advanced as possible, to exaggerate the import- ance of Mexico and his own exploits. The writers who imme- diately followed him saw the country after a conquest and convul- sion, which probably left it as little like itself as the France of the old regime was like the France of the reign of terror. Nor were they men to be relied upon for philosophical observation, scarcely for the accurate representation of any but the vulgarest facts ; being mostly monks, to whose dulness superstition and credulity supplied the place of the wildest invention. Add to these circumstances, the natural suspicion of the Mexicans, the proneness of all unedu- cated people to lie, the difficulty of interpreting their only records the hieroglyphic paintings, the still further difficulty of separating

in the minds of the native informants the knowledge which was really Mexican from the knowledge they had acquired from their Christian teachers ; and it will be seen that the utmost caution should be exercised in implicitly deducing any conclusions from such authorities, or even any fact which contains a conclusion beyond the fact itself. Thus, it appears difficult to conceive that

some of the sentiments in the following passage were not uncon- sciously derived from the invaders, if not interpolated by them as a pious fraud.

RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS OP THE MEXICANS.

A more extraordinary coincidence may be traced with Christian rites, in the ceremony of naming their children. The lips and bosom of the infant were sprinkled with water, and" the Lord was implored to permit the holy droitatil. wash away the sin that was given to it before the foundation of the world; Se that the child might be born anew." We are reminded of Christian morals in more than one of their prayers, in which they used regular forms. "Wilt thou blot us out, 0 Lord, for ever? Is this punishment intended, not for our re-

formation, but for our destruction ?" Again, "Impart to us, out of thy great

mercy, thy gifts, which we are not worthy to receive through our own merits." "Keep peace with all," says another petition ; "bear injuries with humility; God, who sees, will avenge you." But the most striking parallel with Scrip- ture is in the remarkable declaration, that "he who looks too curiously on a woman, commits adultery with his eyes."

ROM some scattered passages it seems clear that Mr. PRESCOTT is himself sceptical as to things his authorities call upon him to relate ; but it only peeps out here and there, and mostly in a note. Repossibly thought that to have infused his doubts into his text vrould have injured his composition, by-making it disquiskional instead of expositional. He has also seen, but not impressed the facts with sufficient distinctness—I. that Mexican civilization was imitative, possibly in its decline, and derived from a nation of remote antiquity • 2. that in despite of all the accounts of the grandeur and civilization of the Mexican empire, the territory of Mexico proper was very small, the country broken up into dif- ferent sovereignties, emigration frequently going on by whole tribes, and the Mexican supremacy of modern date, and dependent upon the personal character of the sovereign.

The continuation of the subject, in the essay on the origin of this civilization in the appendix, is also rather chargeable with sacri- ficing the Philosophy to the composition : but the termination is reasonable enough, if taken as an inference that cannot be proved, not as a conclusion that is established.

"The reader of the preceding pages may perhaps acquiesce in the general conclusions—not startling by their novelty-

"First, that the coincidences ace sufficiently strong to authorize a belief that the civilization of A.nahnac was in some degree influenced by that of Eastern Asia:

"And secondly, that the discrepancies are such as to carry back the com- munication to a very remote period ; so remote, that this foreign influence has been too feeble to interfere materially with the growth of what may be regarded, in its essential features, as a peculiar and indigenous civilization."

The personal life of CORTES, apart from his connexion with the conquest of Mexico, like the inquiry into the antiquities of the country, is a valuable and very agreeable addition to English litera- ture' especially in the passages that trace the disappointments of the hero at the close of his career, from the envy of opponents and the ingratitude of the Emperor. Even of the history itself it may be truly said, that, measured by contemporary productions, it is a great and a rare work. The comparison with a standard classic, where its leading outlines must of necessity be forestalled, has not been sought by us but forced upon us. As the warlike narrative is possibly familiar to many in the pages of ROBERTSON, and we have lately had a spice of it in the Despatches of Cortes, we will take our quotations from fresher matter, and more exhibitive of Mr. PRESCOTT,

HUMAN SACRIFICES: THE GARLANDED VICTIM.

One of their most important festivals was that in honour of the god Tezcat-

la:14whose rank was inferior only to that of the Supreme Being. He was 1" the soul of the world," and supposed to have been its creator. He was depicted as a handsome man, endowed with perpetual youth. A year before the intended sacrifice' a captive, distinguished for his personal beauty, and without a blemish on his body, was selected to represent this deity. Certain tutors took charge of him, and instructed him how to perform his new part with becoming grace and dignity. He was arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense, and with a profusion of sweet-scented flowers, of which the an- cient Mexicans were as fond as their descendants at the present day. 'When he went abroad, he was attended by a train of the royal pages, and, as he halted in the streets to play some favourite melody, the crowd prostrated themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of their good deity. In this way he led an easy, luxurious life, till within a month of his sacrifice. Four beautiful girls, bearing the names of the principal goddesses, were then selected to share the honours of his bed; and with them he continued to live in idle dalliance, feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the honours of a divinity. At length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived. The term of his short-lived glories was at an end. He was stripped of his gaudy apparel, and bade adieu to the fair partners of his revelries. One of the royal barges transported him across the like to a temple which rose on its margin, about a league from the city. Hither the inhabitants of the capital flock, to witness the consumma- tion of the ceremony. As the sad procession wound up the sides of the pyra- mid, the unhappy victim threw away his gay chaplets of flowers, and broke in pieces the musical instruments with which he had solaced the hours of cap- tivity. On the summit he was received by six priests, whose long and matted locks flowed disorderly over their sable robes, covered with hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic import. They led him to the sacrificial stone, a huge block of jasper, with its upper surface somewhat convex. On this the prisoner was stretched. Five priests secured his head and his limbs ; while the sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of his bloody office dexterously opened the breast of the wretched victim with a sharp razor of itztli—a volcanic substance hard as flint— and, inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the palpitating heart. The minister of death, first holding this up towards the sun, an object of worship throughout Anahuac, cast it at the feet of the deity to whom the temple was devoted, while the multitudes below prostrated themselves in humble adoration. The tragic story of this prisoner was expounded by the priests as the type of human destiny, which, brilliant in its commencement, too often closes in sorrow and disaster.

Such was the form of human sacrifice usually practised by the Aztecs. It was the same that often met the indignant eyes of the Europeans in their progress through the country, and from the dreadful doom of which they them- selves were not exempted. There were, indeed, some occasions when prelimi- nary tortures, of the most exquisite kind—with which it is unnecessary to shock the reader—were inflicted, but they always terminated with the bloody ceremony above described. It should, be remarked, however, that such tortures were not the spontaneous suggestions of cruelty, as with the North American Indians; but were all rigorously prescribed in the Aztec ritual, and doubtless were often inflicted with the same compunctions visitings which a devout fami- liar of the Holy Office might at times experience in executing its stern decrees. Women, as well as the other sex, were sometimes reserved for sacrifice.On some occasions, particularly in seasons of drought, at the festival of the insa- tiable Tlaloc, the god of rain, children, for the most part infants, were offered Up. As they were borne along in open litters, dressed in their festal robes, and decked with the fresh blossoms of spring, they moved the hardest heart to pity, though their cries were drowned in the wild chant of the priests, who read in their tears a favourable augury for their petition. These innocent victims were generally bought by the priests of parents who were poor, but who stifled the voice of nature, probably less at the suggestions of poverty than of a wretched auperstition.

MEXICAN MANUSCRIPTS.

In casting the eye over a Mexican manuscript, or map, as it is called, one is Struck with the grotesque caricatures it exhibits of the human figure; mon- strous overgrown heads on puny misshapen bodies, which are themselves hard and angular in their outlines, and without the least skill in composition. On closer inspection, however, it is obvious that it is not so much a rude attempt to delineate nature as a conventional symbol, to express the idea in the most clear and forcible manner; in the same way as the meces of similar value on a

chess-board, while they correspond' with one another in form, bear little resem- blance usually to the objects they represent. Those parts of the figure are most distinctly traced which are the most important. So also the colouring, instead of the delicate gradations of nature, exhibits only gaudy and violent contrasts, such as may produce the most vivid impression. "For even colours," as Gams observes, "speak in the Aztec hieroglyphics."

But in the execution of all this the Mexicans were much inferior to the Egyptians. The drawings of the latter, indeed, are exceedingly defective when criticised by the rules of art ; for they were as ignorant of perspective as the Chinese, and only exhibited the head in profile with the eye in the centre, and with total absence of expression. But they handled the pencil more grace- fully than the Aztecs, were more trite to the natural forms of objects, and, above all, showed great superiority in abridging the original figure by giving only the outline, or some characteristic or essential feature. This simplified the process, and facilitated the communication of thought. An Egyptian text has almost the appearance of alphabetical writing in its regular lines of minute figures. A Mexican text looks usually like a collection of pictures, each one forming the subject of a separate study. This is particularly the case with the delineations of mythology; in which the story is told by a conglomeration of symbols, that may remind one more of the mysterious anaglyphs sculptured on the temples of the Egyptians than of their written records.

The Aztecs had various emblems for expressing such things as, from their' nature, could not be directly represented by the painter; as, for exam*, the years, months, days, the seasons, the elements, the heavens, and the like. A

"tongue" denoted speaking; "a foot-print," travelling; "a man sitting on the ground," an earthquake. These symbols were often very arbitrary, varying with the caprice of the writer; and it requires a nice discrimination to inter- pret them, as a slight change in form or position of the figure intimated a- very different meaning. An ingenious writer asserts that the priests devise& secret symbolic characters for the record of their religious mysteries. It is possible. But the researches of Champollion lead to the conclusion, that the similar opinion, formerly entertained respecting the Egyptian hieroglyphics, is without foundation.

MEXICAN IDEA OF TRADE.

There did not exist in Mexico that distinction of castes found among the Egyptian and Asiatic nations. It was usual, however, for the son to follow the occupation of his father. The different trades were arranged into some thing like guilds; having each a particular district of the city appropriated to it, with its own chief; its own tutelar deity, its peculiar festivals, and the like. Trade was held in avowed estimation by the Aztecs. "Apply thyself, my son," was the advice of an aged chief; "to agriculture, or to feather-work, or some other honourable calling. Thus did, your ancestors before you. Else how would they have provided for themselves and their families ? Never was it heard that nobility alone was able to maintain its possessor." Shrewd maxims, that must have sounded somewhat strange in the ear of a Spanish hidalgo.

JUDGMENT ON THE MASSACRE OF CHOLULA.

Cortes had entered Cholula as a friend, at the invitation of the Indian Em- peror, who had a real, if not avowed, control over the state. He had been received as a friend, with every demonstration of good-will; when, without any offence of his own or his followers be found they were to be the victims of an insidious plot; that they were standing on a mine which might be sprung at any moment, and bury them all in its ruins. His safety, as he truly coni tiered, left no alternative but to anticipate the blow of his enemies. Yet who; can doubt that the punishment thus inflicted was excessive ; that the same end might have been attained by directing the blow against the guilty chiefs, in- stead of letting it fall on the ignorant rabble, who but obeyed the command", of their masters? But when was it ever seen that fear, armed with power; was scrupulous in the exercise of it ? or that the passions of a fierce soldiery, inflamed by OHISChns injuries, could be regulated in the moment of explosion?

We shall, perhaps, pronounce more impartially on the conduct of the con- querors, if we compare it with that of our own contemporaries under somewhat similar circumstances. The atrocities at Cholula were not so bad as those in- flicted on the descendants of these very Spaniard; in the late war of the Penin- sula, by the most polished nations of our time ; by the British at Badajoa, fin example ; at Taragona, and a hundred other places, by the French. The wane. ton butchery, the ruin of property, and, above all, those outrages worse thiut death from which the female part of the population were protected at Cholula, show a catalogue of enormities quite as black as those imputed to the Spaniards, and without the same apology for resentment; with no apology, indeed, but that afforded by a brave anti patriotic resistance. The consideration of these events, which, from their familiarity, make little impression on our senses,. should render us mom lenient in our judgments of the past, showing, as they do, that man in a state of excitement, savage or civilized, is much the same in. every age. It may teach us—it is one of the best lessons of history—that, since such are the inevitable evils of war, even among the most polished people, those who hold the destinies of nations in their hands, whether rulers or legis- lators, should submit to every sacrifice, save that of hononr, before authorizing an appeal to arms. The extreme solicitude to avoid these Alamities by the aid of peaceful congresses and impartial mediation is, on the whole, the strongest evidence, stronger than that afforded by the progress of science and art, of our boasted advance in civilization.

THE WILL OF CORTES.

He makes a liberal provision for his children, and a generous allowance to several old domestics and retainers in his household.By another clause, be, gives away considerable sums in charity ; and he applies the revenues of his:, estates in the city of Mexico to establish and permanently endow three pnblih institutions,—a hospital in the capital, which was to be dedicated to Our Ladt of the Conception ; a college in Cojohuacan for the education of missionaries to preach the gospel among the natives ; and a convent, in the same place, for MI= To the chapel of this convent, situated in his favourite town, he orders that his own body shall be transported for burial, in, whatever quarter of the world he may happen to die. After declaring that he has taken all possible care to ascertain the amount. of the tributes formerly paid by his Indian vassals to their native sovereigns,. he enjoins on his heir, that in case those which they have hitherto paid eine be found to exceed the right valuation, he shall restore them a full equivalent In another clause, he expresses a doubt whether it is right to exact person& service from the natives; and commands that a. strict inquiry shall be ma1e! into the nature and value of such services as he had received, and that, in as, cases, a fair compensation shall be allowed for them. Lastly, he makes this remarkable declaration—"It has long been a question whether one can con- scientiously hold property in Indian slaves. Since this point has not yet been. determined, I enjoin it on my son Martin and his heirs, that they spare BO pains to come to an exact knowledge of the truth ; as a matter which deeply, concerns the conscience of each of them, no less than mine."

PERSONAS. TRAITS OF CORTES.

It may be well to close this review of his character by the account of his manners and personal habits left us by Bernal Diaz, the old chronicler, who has accompanied us through the whole coarse of our narrative, and who may now fitly furnish the conclusion of it. No man knew his commander better; and, if the avowed object of his work might naturally lead to a disparagement of Cortes, this is more than counterbalanced by the warmth of his personal attachment, and by that esprit de corps which leads him to take a pride in the renown of his general. "In his whole appearance and presence," says Diaz, "in his discourse, his table, his dress, in every thing in short, he had the air of a great lord. His clothes were in the fashion of the time ; he set little value on silk, damask, or velvet, but dressed plainly and exceedingly neat ; nor did he wear massy chains of gold, but simply a fine one, of exquisite workmanship, from which was sus- pended a jewel having the figure of our Lady the Virgin and her precious Son, with a Latin motto cut upon it. On his finger he wore a splendid diamond ring ; and from his cap, which, according to the fashion of that day, was of velvet, hung a medal, the device of which I do not remember. He was magni- ficently attended, as became a man of his rank, with chamberlains and major- domos and many pages ; and the service of his table was splendid, with a quan- tity of both gold and silver plate. At noon he dined heartily, drinking about a pint of wine mixed with water. He supped well, though he was not dainty in regard to his food; caring little for the delicacies of the table, unless, indeed, on such occasions as made attention to these matters of some consequence.

"He was acquainted with Latin, and, as I have understood, was made Bachelor of Laws ; and when he conversed with learned men who addressed him in Latin, he answered them in the same language. He was also some- thing of a poet : his conversation was agreeable, and he had a pleasant elocu- tion. In his attendance on the services of the church he was most punctual, devout in his manner, and charitable to the poor. "When he swore, he used to say, On my conscience '; and when he was vexed with any one, 'Evil betide you.' With his men he was very patient ; and they were sometimes impertinent, and even insolent. When very angry, the veins in his throat and forehead would swell, but he uttered no reproaches against either officer or soldier. "He was fond of cards and dice ; and when he played, was always in good humour, indulging freely in jests and repartees. He was affable with his fol- lowers, especially with those who came over with him from Cuba. In his campaigns he paid strict attention to discipline, frequently going the rounds himself during the night, and seeing that the sentinels did their duty. He entered the quarters of his soldiers without ceremony, and chided those whom he found without their arms and accoutrements, saying, 'it was a bad sheep that could not carry its own wool.' On the expedition to Honduras he acquired the habit of sleeping after his meals, feeling unwell if he omitted it ; and, how- ever sultry or stormy the weather, he caused a carpet or his cloak to be thrown under a tree, and slept soundly for some time. He was frank and exceedingly liberal in his disposition, until the last few years of his life, when he was accused of parsimony. But we should consider that his funds were employed on great and costly enterprises; and that none of these, after the conquest, neither his expedition to Honduras nor his voyages to California, were crowned with success. It was perhaps intended that he should receive his recompense in a better world : and I fully believe it; for he was a good cavalier, most true in his devotions to the Virgin, to the Apostle St. Peter, and to all the other Saints."