Es.-Come then, stand forth and tell us Bac.-Take care my friend, upon that ground your footing is but ticklish. Es.-I say so too-moreover, I say that for the public good you ought to have been hang'd first. Ludicrous monologue, or general reflections of a mirthful kind, do not make comedy. It is not enough to give the dramatic shape to a piece, and to produce comic effects in it; the effects must arise from the clash of the characters themselves. Comedy is the mode of ludicrous embodiment that essentially requires the form of the drama as its foundation. what we call philosophy. Thus we have the philosophy of Tullochgorum and John o'Badenym, which prescribes music and song; the philosophy of the poet, who, Goethe says, has received from nature the right enjoyment of the world; the philosophy that bids us drive away care by labour; the influence of the affections and friendship; the love of knowledge; and many But we must consider laughter also as a others. But we have Burns, and Jean philosophy, a mental support and consolation Paul, and thousands besides, who have filled against the ills of life. That there should up the periods of life-weariness, and eased be a sect of laughing philosophers, as well the load of pain, by converting everything as Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans, Hermits, or into fun and jollity. The light-hearted weeping philosophers, is no marvel; for Irishman has often been known, in the many have triumphed over much misery by dreary fatigues of a campaign, to keep up the force of mirth. We cannot drive away the spirits of a company by turning the the immediate pressure of distress; but the laugh against each occurring misery. It intervals of actual hunger, pain, or sickening were well, however, that the gifts of the disappointment, may be spent in a cheerful poor Irish in this particular were not quite mood, rather than in gloomy forebodings so great. There is a certain seriousness and recollections. Even the sense of pre- in keeping with the realities of life, and sent uneasiness may be alleviated by a turn the laughing, and all other philosophies that given to the thoughts and feelings, which is blind us to these,only lead us to destruction. From the Quarterly Review. PRESCOTT'S AND TSCHUDI'S PERU. History of the Conquest of Peru. By Wm. H. Prescott. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1847. Travels in Peru. By Dr. Tschudi. 8vo. London, 1847. Translated from the German by Thomasina Ross. SPANISH America is fortunate in her historian, and Mr. Prescott is fortunate in being the historian of Spanish America. The successive invasion of the two great empires in the New World-that of Montezuma in Mexico, and that of the Incas in Peru-by a few daring Europeans, offered each a subject, combining, with singular felicity, all that gives interest, life, grandeur, variety, and more than that, its proper bounds and unity, to an historical composition. Each is a distinct and a separate chapter in the history of man-each has something of that commanding insulation from the other affairs of the world which makes the histories of Greece, and still more of Rome, at the same time vast and majestic, yet simple and comprehensible. The whole of such history lies within a certain geographical sphere; its events are self-developed from manifest and proximate causes; it unfolds in gradual progression; even its episodes are part of the main design: the mind grasps it from its beginning to its end without effort, with the consciousness that it is commanding the theatre to its utmost extent. It has not, tan pirate of the Mediterranean. Never like modern history, to make a world-wide were such great deeds conceived with such inquiry which spreads like the horizon reckless and desperate boldness, or achieved without limit as it advances-to seek in by such inadequate means; never were such the most remote ages, and in the most dis-feats of courage, such patient endurance, tant countries, the first impulses of the such unutterable and cold-blooded cruelgreat movements which it describes-to un- ties, such deliberate atrocities of fraud; ravel the interwoven policy of all the never did man appear so heroic and so base, great nations of Europe; while it cannot so astonishing and so odious, so devotedly be sure that it may not find in the archives religious in some respects, so utterly godof an obscure cabinet the secret of some less in others; never was superhuman courvast political combination; and knows not age so disgraced by more than savage therefore at what period it has exhausted treachery. the labor which ought to be imposed upon Mr. Prescott's style and manner of comhimself by a high-minded and conscientious position are adapted with singular felicity historian. to this half-poetic history. His strong imThese subjects are worthy, too, of a wri-aginative faculty, heightened by the pecuter possessed of the true genius for historic liarity of his situation (of which more precomposition, as in a certain sense unoccu-sently), delights in the rich and marvellous, pied, and open at least to any one who may both in nature and in human action; he be disposed to fix the English standard up- has acquired a skill of arrangement, and on the soil. Masterly as is the rapid view grouping of characters and events, which of Robertson, the general design and the attests long and patient study of the highlimits of his work precluded him from that est models; while the calmer moral and fulness of detail, that distinctness of de- Christian tone of his judgments by no scription, and that more complete develop-means deadens his sympathies with the ment of character, which may belong to a fiercer and more barbarous heroism of anseparate work on each of these periods of cient days. His narrative presents in South American conquest; and the authorities inaccessible to Dr. Robertson-some of them at length permitted to see the light by the Spanish government, and published by the industry of Spanish writers, such as Mr. Prescott must detain us, however, Muños and Navarrete-others collected in for a short time before we enter upon his MS. by the zeal of Mr. Prescott, or placed History, on one matter personal to himself. at his command by brother collectors from We think that he has judged wisely in corthe confidence awakened by his former writ-recting the misapprehension which has geings--these fresh materials were so numerous and so important as to mark the period for a more complete investigation of the annals of Spanish conquest. Nor is it the least curious fact relating to these works, that the most laborious and dispassionate inquiry, instead of chilling down the history into a cold and unstirring chronicle, ac-nicate to our readers the real state of the tually kindles it into a stranger romance; fiction is pale and spiritless before the marvellous truth. The extraordinary character of the Mexican, and still more of the Peruvian civilization, and the height they had attained, comes into stronger light, as new and trustworthy authorities make their depositions before us; and this civilization. "While at the University, I received an injury contrasts more singularly with the mediaval barbarism-we can use no other word--the in one of my eyes, which deprived me of the chivalrous valor, the heroic bigotry of these sight of it. The other, soon after, was attacked by inflammation so severely that for some time I knight-errants of discovery, mingled up, as lost the sight of that also; and, though it was it was, with the sordid and remorseless ra- subsequently restored, the organ was so much pacity of the robber baron or the Mahome-disordered as to remain permanently debilitated; general, though not without some exceptions, a happy combination of modern historic philosophy with something of the life and picturesqueness of an ancient chronicle. nerally prevailed as to the extent and nature of that disadvantage under which he has labored, and over which he has so signally triumphed by perseverance, industry, and sagacity. We have ourselves so often heard it asserted that Mr. Prescott is totally blind, that we are anxious to commu case, which in itself is sufficiently remarkable, as showing how far the most severe visitations of Divine Providence may be remedied by that energy and ingenuity with which that same merciful Providence has endowed good and wise men. He says : the nerve has been so far increased that for several weeks of the last year I have not opened a volume, and through the whole time I have not had the use of it on an average for more than an hour a day. Nor can I cheer myself with the delusive expectation that, impaired as the organ has become from having been tasked probably beyond its strength, it can ever renew its youth, or be of much service to me hereafter in my literary researches. Whether I shall have the heart to enter, as I had proposed, on a new and more extensive field of historical labor with these impedi while, twice in my life since, I have been deprived of the use of it for all purposes of reading and writing for several years together. It was during one of these periods that I received from Madrid the materials for the History of Ferdinand and Isabella;' and in my disabled condition, with my Transatlantic treasures lying around me, I was like one pining from hunger in the midst of abundance. In this state I resolved to make the ear, if possible, do the work of the eye. I procured the services of a secretary, who read to me the various authorities; and in time I became so far familiar with the sounds of the different foreign lan-ments, I cannot say. Perhaps long habit, and a guages (to some of which, indeed, I had been previously accustomed by a residence abroad), that I could comprehend his reading without much difficulty. As the reader proceeded, I dictated copious notes; and when these had swelled to a considerable amount, they were read to me repeatedly, till 1 had mastered their contents sufficiently for the purposes of composition. The same notes furnished an easy means of reference to sustain the text. natural desire to follow up the career which I have so long pursued, may make this in a manner necessary, as my past experience has already proved that it is practicable. "From this statement-too long, I fear, for his patience-the reader who feels any curiosity about the matter will understand the real extent of my embarrassments in my historical pursuits. That they have not been very light will be readily admitted, when it is considered that I have had but "Still another difficulty occurred in the mecha- a limited use of my eye in its best state, and that nical labor of writing, which I found a severe trial much of the time I have been debarred from the to the eye. This was remedied by means of a use of it altogether. Yet the difficulties I have writing-case, such as is used by the blind, which had to contend with are very far inferior to those enabled me to commit my thoughts to paper with- which fall to the lot of a blind man. I know of out the aid of sight, serving me equally well in no historian now alive who can claim the glory of the dark as in the light. The characters thus having overcome such obstacles but the author of formed made a near approach to hieroglyphics; 'La Conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands;' but my secretary became expert in the art of de- who, to use his own touching and beautiful lanciphering, and a fair copy-with a liberal allow-guage, has made himself the friend of darkness;' ance for unavoidable blunders-was transcribed for the use of the printer. I have described the process with some minuteness, as some curiosity has been repeatedly expressed in reference to my modus operandi under my privations, and the knowledge of it may be of some assistance to others in similar circumstances. "Though I was encouraged by the sensible progress of my work, it was necessarily slow. But in time the tendency to inflammation diminished, and the strength of the eye was confirmed more and more. It was at length so far restored that I could read for several hours of the day, though my labors in this way necessarily terminated with the daylight. Nor could I ever dispense with the services of a secretary or with the writing-case; for, contrary to the usual experience, I have found writing a severer trial to the eye than reading-a remark, however, which does not apply to the reading of manuscript; and to enable myself, therefore, to revise my composition more carefully, I caused a copy of the History of Ferdinand and Isabella' to be printed for my own inspection before it was sent to the press for publication. Such as I have described was the improved state of my health during the preparation of the Conquest of Mexico; and, satisfied with being raised so nearly to a level with the rest of my species, I scarcely envied the superior good fortune of those who could prolong their studies into the evening and the later hours of the night. "But a change has again taken place during the last two years. The sight of my eye has be come gradually dimmed, while the sensibility of and who, to a profound philosophy that requires no light but that from within, unites a capacity for extensive and various research that might well demand the severest application of the student."Preface, pp. xiv. xvii. We can understand the poet, on whom in Surrounded, from the cheerful ways of men -we can easily conceive such poet's mind creating out of the treasures of his memory pictures even as living, as exquisite, as truthful, as Milton's own Garden of Eden, or our first parents as embodied by him in their paradisiacal state. The imagination thrown back upon itself, withdrawn from and undisturbed by the common every-day vulgarities of life, concentred on the noble, the beautiful, the picturesque, would naturally combine the highest idealism with the most perfect reality in its descriptions of outward things-the creative would at the same time be a refining and ennobling process. We think, indeed, that we can clearly trace the workings of Milton's blind- | which those great writers have been followness in his later poetry. We fancy him ed by so many of the modern French histositting alone in his majestic seclusion, and rians, till, in several instances, that which summoning up all that his memory deemed was striking and legitimate dramatic art worthy of retention-the terrible becoming has degenerated into melo-dramatic artifice. more awfully terrible-the majestic more Unquestionably this is one of the great unimpededly majestic-the beautiful of charms of M. 'Thierry's History, and in him more unmingled beauty; everything first this imaginative power has not trespassed fully imagined on the retina of his mind, beyond its rightful privilege. The same and then assuming the most appropriate idiosyncrasy would tend, where a theory has language-language itself wrought up to full possession of the mind, to work up that perfection, not as in his earlier often-cor- theory with exclusive devotion, seizing and rected works (as may be seen in Trinity magnifying all which is in its favor, quietly College library), by blottings and interlin- discarding and passing over all those stubings, but by a purely mental alchemy. On born and obtrusive objections which a closer this, however, we must not now dwell. and less purely mental study might elude But that a history so original and so with difficulty. To this perhaps we may laborious as that of M. Thierry should have attribute the somewhat exaggerated views been accomplished under such circum- of the conflict between the Norman and stances, appears almost incredible. Even Anglo-Saxon races, which is a kind of hisin Mr. Prescott's comparatively less embar- toric passion with M. Thierry. To the rassing position, it is difficult to imagine latter temptation Mr. Prescott is singularly how the mind, without the constant aid of superior: he has no preconceived historic the outward sense, can perform that difficult hypothesis to which he is disposed to bend office of discriminating the important from the reluctant facts; his judgment is as the useless-of winnowing, as it were, and sober as his analysis is keen; he seems to treasuring up the grain from the chaff, in hold it the duty of the historian to relate the multifarious inquiries which must open the results of his inquiries without accountas the preparation advances; how that ing for that which is beyond the scope of of which the weighty bearing cannot at first history. This is no inconsiderable praise, sight be discerned, is not irrecoverably with the great question of the origin of lost; how characters and events in this Mexican and Peruvian civilization conrude manner of study (for rude it must be, stantly before him, and beckoning him even with the most ingenious appliances) onwards into the dazzling mirage of antishould assume their proper magnitude and quarian speculation. We find it ourselves due proportion; how authorities should be so difficult to practise the self-denial which compared, weighed, sifted, and the judg- we admire in Mr. Prescott, that it cannot ment come to its conscientious conclusion but increase our respect for his judicious without misgiving as to the stability of its abstinence. In one other respect, perhaps, grounds; how those light and casual hints we may trace to this enforced mode of comwhich occasionally betray to the sagacious position the only drawback, and that a mind the mystery of some character, of slight one, to our delight in reading Mr. some line of conduct, or some great event, Prescott's work--an accumulation, occashould not escape even the most sagacious sionally too great, of picturesque epithets; when to a certain extent dependent upon a somewhat too elaborate contrast of colors; others these obvious difficulties naturally too smooth and exquisite a finish; a style, occur, and heighten our astonishment when- in short, at times rather overloaded, and ever success is achieved. Yet, even in such wanting in the ease and continuous flow cases, there may be some compensatory ad- which is the charm of history, and which at vantages. We think that we can discern in other times carries us on through his clear M. Thierry's writings, as well in their excel- and lively pages with one steady impulse of lences as in one or two partial defects, a interest and pleasure. betrayal, as it were, of this peculiar mode It is curious, indeed, now and then to of composition. In such a case there would contrast the rude force of some of the phrabe a natural tendency to form everything ses of eye and ear witnesses preserved in into complete mental pictures, to that actual the Notes to the "Conquest of Peru" with reanimation of the past which M. de Ba-the well-turned periods of the author's text; rante has attempted, and successfully at- he has no doubt judged wisely in not incortempted, on a deliberate theory; and in porating them in his narrative, as they might have jarred with its general harmony, and, in fact, substituting a peaceful reliyet we cannot but think that the style gious order, undazzlingly attired and unwhich would admit them would be ab- luxurious in their habits, for the gorgeous stractedly more perfect. But after all, the and martial descendants of Manco Capac style is usually so completely the expres- and their Curacas-the Roman Catholic sion of the author's character, as it were his worship of Christ, with the saints and Virnature, that we would not insist much on gin, for that of the Sun and the heavenly this point. bodies-there might seem the same results, Mr. Prescott commences his History of the same meek obedience, the same absothe Peruvian Conquest, as he did his former lute though gentle tutelage, the same work, with a view of the civilization of the industry, the same unreasoning yet contentconquered people. And if that of the ed happiness. With the other form of Aztecs, after his calm and dispassionate in- South American civilization there was vestigation, cannot be read without asto- almost indisputably no connexion; the nishment, so far is that of the Peruvians institutions of Mexico and Peru, in their from losing any of that marvellous charac-general aspect, stand in the strongest conter with which it struck the first Spanish trast; and Mr. Prescott seems justified in his discoverers, that wonder only deepens with opinion that there was not the least interinquiry. course between these two American empires. Peruvian civilization goes far to solve the "The fiction of Manco Capac and his great question of the self-originating power sister wife was devised, no doubt, at a later of man as to institutions: it seems utterly period, to gratify the vanity of the Peruvian to overthrow the long dominant theory, monarchs, and to give additional sanction that similarity of laws, usages, and civil to their authority by deriving it from a polity necessarily implies identity of race, celestial origin." So writes Mr. Prescott. affiliation, or common descent, or some The philosophy of these myths we must for communication with a more advanced tribe the present leave to Mr. Grote: but this is or race. The same social arrangements only another instance of the same universal grow out of the human mind under the same tendency of man either himself to deify his circumstances, without any foreign inter- legislators, or acquiesce in their assumption vention. Man is the same, to a great ex- of deity. All royal races culminate in gods tent, in every part of the world, and in every-that is, in the Unknown. The line of period; society is part of his nature, and so- the Incas, where it ceases to be traceable cial forms, being circumscribed in their va- further upward (and Peruvian history aspirriations, will take the same character, enacted not beyond à dynasty of thirteen printhe same provisions, establish the same ces), terminates in the Great God. This ranks and gradations, aim at the same ob- god among the Peruvians was the Sun, as jects, and attain the same ends. For here, among the Greeks it was Jupiter, among in this remote and unapproachable quarter the Romans Mars. It is not so much (here of the New World-within, it should seem, we fully enter into the justice of the more a limited historical period-with no con- modern theory on this subject) the delibeceivable connexion or relationship to other rate invention of vanity, or the artful demore advanced tribes or families of man- sign of strengthening the theocratic power kind-with the usual myth of certain stran- of the kings, as the universal religious sengers descended from heaven, and delibe- timent, which makes the gods the parents rately and at once awing wild tribes of of sovereigns and founders of dynasties. savages into social order and obedience, But, neither in Eastern Asia, in the Tartar and organizing a perfect commonwealth on kingdoms, in Thibet, nor under the later new principles-this myth, however, more Caliphate in the West, does the theocracy, than usually betraying itself to be a myth- which claims indefeasible and absolute here is an assemblage of institutions which sovereignty for the lineal descendant of the might seem gathered, for some fanciful gods, appear in a form so undisguised and Utopia, from all ages and all regions of the imperious as it did in Peru. The Inca was world. Tartary, China, Egypt, Judea, the living son and representative of GodRome, Catholic Europe, might seem each almost God upon earth. to have brought some tribute to the edifice of this social polity. In one respect the Jesuit settlements of Paraguay might appear to have been modelled on this type; It is remarkable, that the worship of the sun, that primitive and noblest of idolatries, seems to have maintained a more complete and absolute dominance in Peru |