THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.-1. History of the Conquest of Peru. By Wm. H. Prescott. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1847. 2. Travels in Peru. By Dr. Tschudi. Translated from the German by Thomasina Ross. 8vo. London, 1847. PANISH AMERICA is fortunate in her historian, and SPANISH Mr. Prescott is fortunate in being the historian of Spanish America. The successive invasions 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, like modern history, to make a world-wide inquiry which spreads like the horizon without limit as it advances-to seek in the most remote ages, and in the most distant countries, the first impulses of the great movements which it describes to unravel the interwoven policy of all the great nations of Europe; while it cannot be sure that it may not find in the archives of an obscure cabinet the secret of some vast political combination; and knows not therefore at what period it has exhausted the labour which ought to be imposed upon himself by a high-minded and conscientious historian. These subjects are worthy, too, of a writer possessed of the true genius for historic composition, as in a certain sense unoccupied, and open at least to any one who may be disposed to fix the English standard upon the soil. Masterly as is the rapid view of Robertson, the general design and the limits of his work precluded him from that fulness of detail, that distinctness of description, XXI. NO. CLXII. Y scription, and that more complete development of character, which may belong to a separate work on each of these periods of 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 Muños and Navarrete-others collected in MS. by the zeal of Mr. Prescott, or placed at his command by brother collectors from the confidence awakened by his former writings-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, actually 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 contrasts more singularly with the mediæval barbarism-we can use no other word-the chivalrous valour, the heroic bigotry of these knight-errants of discovery, mingled up, as it was, with the sordid and remorseless rapacity of the robber baron or the Mahometan pirate of the Mediterranean. Never were such great deeds conceived with such reckless and desperate boldness, or achieved by such inadequate means; never were such feats of courage, such patient endurance, such unutterable and coldblooded cruelties, such deliberate atrocities of fraud; never did man appear so heroic and so base, so astonishing and so odious, so devotedly religious in some respects, so utterly godless in others; never was superhuman courage so disgraced by more than savage treachery. Mr. Prescott's style and manner of composition are adapted with singular felicity to this half-poetic history. His strong imaginative faculty, heightened by the peculiarity of his situation (of which more presently), delights in the rich and the marvellous, both in nature and in human action; he has acquired a skill of arrangement, and grouping of characters and events, which attests long and patient study of the highest models; while the calmer moral and Christian tone of his judgments by no means deadens his sympathies with the fiercer and more barbarous heroism of ancient days. His narrative presents in general, though not without some exceptions, a happy combination of modern historic philosophy with something of the life and picturesqueness of an ancient chronicle. Mr. Mr. Prescott must detain us, however, for a short time before we enter upon his History, on one matter personal to himself. We think that he has judged wisely in correcting the misapprehension which has generally prevailed as to the extent and nature of that disadvantage under which he has laboured, 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 communicate to our readers the real state of the 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: 'While at the University, I received an injury in one of my eyes, which deprived me of the sight of it. The other, soon after, was attacked by inflammation so severely that for some time I lost the sight of that also; and, though it was subsequently restored, the organ was so much disordered as to remain permanently debilitated; 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 languages (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 I had mastered their contents sufficiently for the purposes of composition. The same notes furnished an easy means of reference to sustain the text. 'Still another difficulty occurred in the mechanical labour of writing, which I found a severe trial to the eye. This was remedied by means of a writing-case, such as is used by the blind, which enabled me to commit my thoughts to paper without the aid of sight, serving me equally well in the dark as in the light. The characters thus formed made a near approach to hieroglyphics; but my secretary became expert in the art of deciphering, and a fair copy-with a liberal allowance for unavoidable blunders-was transcribed for the use of the printer. I have described the process with more 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 labours 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 become gradually dimmed, while the sensibility of 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 labour with these impediments I cannot say. Perhaps long habit, and a 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 a limited use of my eye in its best state, and that much of the time I have been debarred from the use of it altogether. Yet the difficulties I have had to contend with are very far inferior to those which fall to the lot of a blind man. I know of no historian now alive who can claim the glory of having overcome such obstacles but the author of "La Conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands;" who, to use his own touching and beautiful language, "has made himself the friend of darkness ;" 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 later or in middle life has fallen this sad privation, in the words of Milton: 'By Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair, Of Nature's works to him expung'd and ras'd; -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 We think, insame time be a refining and ennobling process. deed, that we can clearly trace the workings of Milton's blindness in his later poetry. We fancy him sitting alone in his majestic seclusion, and summoning up all that his memory deemed worthy of retention the terrible becoming more awfully terrible-the majestic more unimpededly majestic- the beautiful of more unmingled beauty; everything first fully imaged on the retina of his mind, and then assuming the most appropriate languagelanguage itself wrought up to perfection, not as in his earlier often-corrected works (as may be seen in Trinity College library), by blottings and interlinings, but by a purely mental alchemy. On this, however, we must not now dwell. But that a history so original and so laborious as that of M. Thierry should have been accomplished under such circumstances, appears almost incredible. Even in Mr. Prescott's comparatively less embarrassing position, it is difficult to imagine how the mind, without the constant aid of the outward sense, can perform that difficult office of discriminating the important from the useless-of winnowing, as it were, and treasuring up the grain from the chaff, in the multifarious inquiries which must open as the preparation advances; how that of which the weighty bearing cannot at first sight be discerned, is not irrecoverably lost; how characters and events in this rude manner of study (for rude it must be, even with the most ingenious appliances) should assume their proper magnitude and due proportion; how authorities should be compared, weighed, sifted, and the judgment come to its conscientious conclusion without misgiving as to the stability of its grounds; how those light and casual hints which occasionally betray to the sagacious mind the mystery of some character, of some line of conduct, or some great event, should |