OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 153 



when we see it in the favored few of our race endowed to finer uses, 

 half persuades us that, after all, there is a choice vein even in the mor- 

 tal clay which the elemental chemistry of the Creator works up for the 

 tabernacles of selecter human spirits. It was through this beautiful 

 nature that he won friends of all who approached him, and kept all 

 that he had won. 



" With all these means and felicities, he was rightly held to accom- 

 plish some high service. An impaired vision turned for help to others' 

 eyes, and a frame not robust was spared the over-task, and was kindly 

 watched and exercised. Conscientiously truthful as a writer, he felt 

 the responsibility of stamping fair paper with records and judgments 

 about the dead, which would convey enduring impressions to the living. 

 He enjoyed the romance of his themes, and he intended so to deal with 

 them that his readers would be held closely to his narrative. In this 

 intent he succeeded. It was somewhat noticeable, that on the very day 

 of his obsequies, a few hours before the bookstores were to be closed 

 in sympathy with the sad service in the church, there was circulated 

 among them a prospectus and specimen sheet of a new and rival work 

 on the Conquest of Mexico. I saw the pamphlet, but did not feel dis- 

 posed then to open or to touch it. I have since read it, and find that 

 its claim is to a severer authenticity of narrative than is allowed to 

 Mr. Prescott's work, which is chai'ged with an excessive confidence in 

 monkish, legendary, and unreliable authorities. Mr. Prescott was well 

 aware that this criticism had been visited upon his History on its first 

 publication. The charge, however, is hardly warranted to the extent 

 to which it is pi'essed. The careful reader of his work will find many 

 cautionary and abating criticisms in his notes on these disputed author- 

 ities. But this is no time or occasion for pursuing such suggestions. 

 I wish only to add, that the promised work has lost the most interested 

 and candid reader that it would have had, in Mr. Prescott. 



" Since he has left us, with the feeling natural at such a time, I have 

 been reading over, in a quiet hour, every personal memorial which I 

 have of him in note and letter. It is pleasant to find in them a series 

 of communications running parallel with his whole course as an author, 

 and with a score of years of most agreeable intercourse. His first 

 work, Ferdinand and Isabella, his gage to fame, was published just as 

 I was prepai-ing to leave my home, a stone's throw from his own, for 

 foreign travel. He asked me to assume the pleasant ofiice of convey- 



VOL. IV. 20 



