266 Scientific Reviews. 
vance of free institutions, which now permit the researches of tra- 
vellers in countries to which near approach was a short time ago 
denied. The difficulty of obtaining correct statistical information, 
renders every author liable to errors on that subject. An inaccu- 
rate knowledge of natural history, will always show itself in the 
defective details appertaining to physical geography ; and the de- 
monstration of these facts, must be accomplished by a strict analy- 
sis of the work. An inattention in laying before the reader the 
general facts which modern discoveries have led to, whether in a 
geographical or in a commercial point of view,—an incapability to 
grapple with those prejudices that cloud the true political condition 
of trans-atlantic nations,—and a failure in accomplishing the task 
which the author has imposed upon himself,—can at once be shown 
by an appeal to the subject, or by a comparison of what is known 
upon North America, and what the author has said about it. We 
are aware that “ among the most remarkable changes which lite- 
rary pursuits have undergone of late, one is, that writing for the 
public has ceased to be in general the best manner of disseminating 
truths useful to our fellow-creatures, and tending to the common 
good, for which an honest and honourable remuneration was to be 
expected. Now-a-days the remuneration is the sole end in view. 
Truth is not spoken out fearlessly and honestly, lest the book should 
not sell. ‘The prejudices and passions of the public are flattered, 
and that is the best work which sells best.”—For. Rev. Sept. 1829. 
The vice engendered by such proceeding gained new strength in 
Edinburgh, from the blow which its literature received a few years 
ago, as if the mental vigour of the author was te become paralyzed 
by the fears of his bookseller,—as if the northern spirit of litera- 
ture, the glow of science or of poetry, the genius and industry of 
this fair city, from the author of Waverly down to Mr. Murray, 
was to be shackled and tortured by an inquisitorial censorship, as 
hurtful and injurious as that generated by a narrow polity. ‘This 
state of things will not be allowed to last. The Literary Journal 
has, in its own department, shown the way, and we will never sit 
in our critical chair to sacrifice our independence of principle, and 
our right to condemn that which is bad, to prejudices which are 
based on authority, or to a compliance which is enforced by fear. 
To commence, then, with the southern part of North America), 
the conquest of most part of which by the Spaniards, under the 
ambitious Cortes, forms one of the interesting epochs in the His- 
tery of the Discoveries in North America. Three centuries this 
country remained under the dominion of a nation pre-eminently 
distinguished for its restricted colonial policy. Foreigners were 
prohibited from traversing its fertile plains and rugged hills, and 
we were almost entirely ignorant of its actual condition, till the 
first appearance of Baron Humboldt’s “ Essai.” Since that time 
a succession of events lessened the veneration with which the Ame- 
ricans had regarded their European sovereign. Commercial mono- 
pely, and restrictions on the industry of the colony, that their pro- 
