William Hickling Prescott

very quarter. Of course he had no intention of remaining idle long, but a new subject did not at once present itself so clearly to him as to make his choice of it inevitable. Fo

reeable and popular rather than profound. Yet Spain still kept its hold on his imagination, and even before his

civilisation of the Mexicans-a beautiful prose epic, for which rich virgin materials teem in Simancas and Madrid, a

es to be found upon that subject. He had also gone carefully through the Gospels, weighing them with all the acumen which he had brought to bear upon his Castilian chronicles. This investigation, which he had begun with reference to the single question of immortality, broadened out into an examination of the whole evidential basis of orthodox Christianity. In this study he was aided by his fath

by himself in these words: "To do well and act justly, to fear and to love God, and to love our neighbour as ourselves-in these is the essence of religion. For what we can believe, we are not responsible, supposing we examine candidly and patiently. For what we do, we shall indeed be accountable. The doctrines of the Saviour unfold the

great, and a knowledge of this fact roused in Prescott all the enthusiasm of an historical investigator who has scented a new and promising trail. Only one thing now stood in the way. This was an intimation to the effect that Washington Irving had already planned a similar piece of work. This bit of news was imparted to Prescott by Mr. J. G. Cogswell, who was then in charge of the Astor Library in New York, and who was an intimate friend of both Prescott and Irving. Mr. Cogswell told Prescott that Irving was intending to write

ourtesy, which I can very well appreciate, as I know the mortification it would have caused me if, contrary to my expectations, I had found you on the ground.... I fear the public will not feel so much pleased as myself by this liber

iterary and scholarly amenities. The sacrifice which Irving made in giving up his theme was as fine as the manner of it was graceful. Prescott never knew how much it meant to Irving, who had already not only made some study of the subject, but had sketched out the ground-plan

me in it, and looked upon it as the pendant to my Columbus. When I gave it up to him I, in a manner, gave him up my bread; for I depended upon the profits of it to recruit my waning finances. I had no other sub

in gathering materials relating to the early Aztec civilisation. Don Pascual de Gayangos, who had written the favourable notice in the Edinburgh Review, delved among the documents in the British Museum on behalf of Prescott, and caused copies to be made of whatever seemed to bear upon the Mexican conquest. A year or two later, he even sent to Prescott the whole of his own collection of manuscripts. In Spain very valuable assistance was given by Mr. A. H. Everett, at that time American Minister to the Spanish court, and by his first Secretary of Legation, the South Carolinian who had taken his entrance examination to Harvard in Prescott's company, and who throughout his college life ha

home again that I came to know the secret of these most diligent civilities. I still had one of my Embassy letters which I had never presented. I read it for the first time, to learn that I was the coadjutor and friend of the great historian Prescott through all his life, that I was his assistant through all his historical work, and, indeed, for these reasons, no American was more worthy of the consideration of the gentlemen in charge of the Spanish archives. It was certainly by no fault of

pre-historic period of Mexico, obscured as it was by the mist of myth and by the contradictory assertions of conflicting authorities. "The whole of that part of the story," wrote Prescott, "is in twilight, and I fear I shall at least make only moonshine of it. I must hope that it will be good moonshine. It will go hard with me, however, but that I can fish something new out of my ocean of manuscripts." He had hoped to dispose of his introduction in a hundred pages, and to finish it in six months at the most. It actually extended to two hundred and fifty pages, and the writing of it took nearly eighteen months. One interruption occurred which he had not anticipated. The success of Ferdinand and Is

which they paid the author $7500, with the right of publishing more copies if required within the period of one year and on the same general terms. An English edition was simultaneously brought out by Bentley in London, who purchased the foreign copyright for ￡650. Three Spanish translations ap

n and unknown, all over the civilised world. Ferdinand and Isabella had brought him reputation; the Conquest of Mexico made him famous. Honours came to him unsought. He was elected a member of the French Institute[13] and of the Royal Society of Berlin. He had already accepted membership in the Royal Spanish Academy of History at Madrid and in the Royal Academy of Sciences in Naples. Harvard conferred

n the very soil itself where a part of these great events took place. My severity, sir, has been disarmed by the reading of your Conquest of Mexico. You paint with success because you have seen with the eyes of the spirit and of the inner sense. It is a pleasure to me, a citizen of Mexico, to have liv

6. During its progress he made a note that he had written two chapters, amounting in all to fifty-one printed pages, in four days, adding the comment, "I never did up so much yarn in the same time. At this rate Peru will not hold out six months. Can I finish it in a year? Alas for the reader!" No doubt he might have finished it in a year had certain interruptions not occurred. The first of these was the death of his father, which took place on December 8th, not long after he had begun the book. His brother Edward had died shortly before, and this double affliction affected very deeply so sensitive a nature as Prescott's. To his father, indeed, he owed more than he could ever express. The two had been true comrades, and had treated one another with an affectionate familiarity which, between father and son, was as rare in those days as it was beautiful. Judge Prescott's generosity had made it possible for the younger man to break through all the barriers of physical infi

pt digging," as he said. The strain was one from which his eye never fully recovered; and from this time until the completion of the Peru, he could use it in reading for only a few minutes every day, sometimes perhaps for ten or fifteen, but never for more than thirty. As this is the last time that we shall mention this subject, it may be said that for all purposes of literary work Prescott was soon afterward reduced to the position of one who was actually blind. What had before been a merely stationary dimness of vision became a slowly progressive decay of sight, or, to express it in medical language, amblyopia had passed into amaurosis. He followed rigorously his oculist's injunctions, but in the end he had to face the facts unflinchingly; and a little later he recorded his determination to give up all use of the eye for the future in his studies, and to be contented with preserving it for the ordinary purposes of life. The necessity disheartened him. "It takes the stren

e of over-fluency or even slovenliness. Yet, as a matter of fact, the chorus of praise which greeted the two volumes was as loud and as spontaneous as it had been over his Mexico. Prescott now stood so firmly on his feet as to look at much

neither the fine edge of the Edinburgh nor the sledgehammer stroke of the Quarterly. They twaddle out their humour as if they were afraid of its biting too hard, or else they deliver axioms with a sort of smart, dapper conceit, like a little parson laying down

w honours which he greatly prized,-an election to the Royal English Society of Literature, and the other an invitation to membership in the Royal Soc

n amanuensis. Prescott had an aversion to writing in this way, although he had before him the example of his blind contemporary, Thierry. Like Alphonse Daudet, he seems to have felt that what is written by hand comes more directly from the author's inner self, and that it represents most truly the tints and half-tones of his personality. That this is only a fancy is seen clearly enough from several striking instances which the history of literature reco

He knew every one who was worth knowing, and every one was attracted by the spontaneous charm of his manner and his invincible kindliness. Never was a man more free from petulance or peevishness, though these defects at ti

nto his public, but into his private, writings. In the hundreds of letters, many of them of the most confidential character, treating freely of other authors and of a great variety of persons, which I wrote at his dictation, not a single unkind or harsh or sneering expression occu

d his testimony to the greatnes

he was tender and gentle and humane. His voice was like music and one could never hear enough of it. His cheerfulness reached and animated al

Lady Lyell, Lady Mary Labouchère, and the Duchess of Sutherland; Spanish hidalgos like Calderon de la Barca; smooth politicians like Caleb Cushing; and intense partisans like Charles Sumner,-all agreed in their affectionate admiration for Prescott. His friendship with Sumner was indeed quite

, great and small, are all to be blotted from memory equally with my own wild skirmishes of barbarians and banditti. Lord deliver us! Where will you bring up? If the stories are not to be painted or written, such records of them as have

, but his loyalty was given to the whole country and not to any faction or party. His cast of mind was essentially conservative, and down to 1856 he would no doubt have called himself an old-line Whig. He was always, however, averse to political discussion which, indeed, led easily to personalities that w

ne." There is a tameness about this sentence which one would scarcely notice had Sumner merely received a black eye, but which offends one's sense of fitness when we recall that Sumner had been beaten into insensibility, and that he never fully recovered from the attack. Again, when, in 1854, Boston was all ablaze over the capture of a fugitive slave, when the city was filled with troops and muskets were levelled at the populace, Prescott merely remarked to an English correspondent: "It is a disagreeable business." To be sure, he also said, "It made my blood boil," but the general tone of the letter shows that his blood must have boiled at a very low temperature. Nevertheless, he seems to have been somewhat stirred by the exciting struggle which took place over Kansas between the Free-Soil forces and the partisans of slavery. Hence, in 1856, he cast his vote for Frémont, the first Republican candidate fo

received with genuine pleasure. Their number increased as the years went by so that once in a single week he entertained, at Pepperell, Se?or Calderon, Stephens the Central American traveller, and the British General Harlan from Afghanistan. Sir Charles Lyell, Lady Lyell, Lord Carlisle, and Dickens were also visitors of his. It was as the guest of Prescott that Thackeray ate his first dinner in America.[14] Visitors of this sort, of course, he was very glad to see. Not so much could be said of the strangers

en o'clock at any function, however pleasant. An old friend of his has left an account of one especially convivial occasion to which Prescott had invited a number of his friends. The dinner was given at a restaurant, and the guests were mostly young men and fond of good living. The affair went off so well that, as the hour of ten approached, no one thought o

tood in a corner. "Then you know you are just as much at home in this house as I am. You can call for what you like. Don't be alarmed-I mean on my account. I abandon to you, without rese

ed Prescott, "you would say that your ladyship's hair is in a snarl!" Which, unfortunately, it was-a fact that by no means soothed the lady's temper at being told so. There was a certain boyishness about Prescott, however, which usually enabled him to carry these things off without offence, because they were obviously so natural and so unpremeditated. His boyishness took other forms which were more generally pleasing. One evidence of it was his fondness for such games as blindman's buff and puss-in-the-corner, in which he used to engage with all the zest of a child, even after he had passed his fiftieth year, and in which the whole household took part, together with any distinguished foreigners who might be present. Another youthful trait was his readiness to burst into song on all occasions, even in the midst of his work. In fact, just before beginning any animated bit of descriptive writing he would rouse himself up by shouting out some ballad that had caught his fancy; so that stra

ca." Prescott was a true Yankee also in the carefulness of his attention to matters of business. He did not value money for its own sake. His father had left him a handsome competence. He spent freely both for himself and for his friends; but none the less, he made the most minute notes of all his publishing ventures and analysed the publishers' returns as carefully as though he were a professional accountant. This was due in part, no doubt, to a natural desire to measure the popularity of his books by the standard of financial success. He certainly had no reason to be dissatisfied. Up to the time of his death, of the Ferdinand and Isabella there had been sold in the United States and England nearly eighteen thousand copies; of the Conquest of Mexi

mpness of the breeze affected unfavourably his tendency to rheumatism, so that he seldom spent more than eight weeks of the year upon the sea-shore. He found also that the reflection of the sun from the water was a thing to be avoided. Therefore, he most thoroughly enjoyed his other country place at Pepperell, where his grandmother had lived. The plain little house, known as "The Highlands," and shaded by great trees, seemed to him his truest home. Here, more than elsewhere, he threw off his cares and gave himself up completely to his drives and rides and walks and social pleasures. The country round about was then well wooded, and Prescott delighted to gallop through the forests and over the rich countrysid

es distant from his cottage at Nahant. Here the sea-breeze was cool but never damp; while, unlike Nahant, the place was surrounded by green meadow-land and pleasant woods. This new house was much more luxurious than the cottages at Nahant and Pepperell, and he spent at Lynn nearly all his summers during his last five years. He

f it. The state of his eye made it impossible for him to remain long in the sunshine; and so, in his hours of composition, he paced around the circle of the shade afforded by this tree, carrying in his hand a light umbrella, which he raise