among the profligate soldiers of Peru, if it were only to observe the instinctive homage which vice pays to virtue. His qualities, like diamonds, derived their value from their rarity. There were enough courageous stabbers and reckless intriguers in the country; there was no lack of gold, and silver, and merchandise; but truth and honesty were scarce and inestimable. The usual laws which regulate supply and demand began to operate. Among a set of liars, and perjurers, and traitors, and murderers, a true, faithful, loyal, and just man, was at once a phenomenon and a priceless treasure. At the same time, he comprehended all Peru in his capacious mind, and he ruled it because he knew all its inhabitants better than they knew themselves. Virtuous himself, all the resources and tricks of vice were more visible to his eye than if he had mastered them by experience. No plotter, who had passed all his life in intrigue, was so sure in his judgment of rascality, so certain in the means he took to circumvent it. He was one of those wise men who read things in their principles, and he therefore never made mistakes. He saw, as in prophetic vision, the remotest results of all his acts; and accordingly, when he had commenced a course of policy, he never wavered, never experienced a doubt of his success, because he knew what must happen from the nature of things. This insight into the principles of events, this settled faith based on the clearest intelligence, is the crowning glory of the genius of action. Gasca, in Peru, evinced a capacity for government which the complex affairs of a European empire would not have exhausted.

In order to do full justice to Mr. Prescott's work, we should present to our readers some extracts illustrating its excellences of narration and description; but this our

at the subject in what light we may, from the view of religion or the view of common sense, we must still admit that we cannot balk or elude those eternal laws of the universe, which deny lasting power to the energies of robbery and the schemes of rapine. The laws of God, in their slow, silent, and terrible operation, will still move tranquilly on, turning all our glory to shame, all our strength to weakness; though we, in the mad exultation of our guilt, turn night into day with our bonfires, and rend the skies with our huzzas.

sinated by the followers of Almagro's son, Diego; and the latter fell in battle with the Spanish authorities, under Vaca de Castro. Hernando Pizarro passed the largest portion of his life in a Spanish prison; Juan, the best of the brothers, was killed by the Peruvians; and Gonzalo, a man of some generosity and openness of mind, and of a chivalrous temper, after having arrived by rebellion to the supreme command in Peru, was betrayed by his followers, and executed as a traitor. In these various feuds, most of the original gang of pirates who conquered the country either fell in battle or were executed on the scaffold; their stolen property passed into the possession of others; and even the few who did not die a violent death were under the control of two masters gambling and licentiousness - which gave them poverty and disease for wages. As their crimes brought no good to themselves, so, also, they laid Peru under a curse from which she has not yet recovered. The seeds of a new empire can never be sown by the outcasts of an old one; and those who look upon a country with the eyes of a pickpocket will soon ruin everything in it which nature will allow human folly and wickedness to destroy. The history of the conquest of Peru, as presented in the vivid pages of Mr. Prescott, is capable of conveying many lessons on the retribution which follows conquest and rapine, which late events in our own history show that we have incompletely learned. It would seem that every man of common intelligence and common patriotism would rather see the power of his country palsied, than made the instrument of crime. Such a misuse of strength never has been and never can be successful. The poisoned chalice will inevitably be returned to our own lips, for the world is ruled by divine, not demoniacal agencies. Look

limits will not permit. The mind of the author yields itself with a beautiful readiness to the inspiration of his subject, and he leads the reader along with him through every scene of beauty and grandeur in which the stirring adventures he narrates are placed. We would refer particularly to the description of the passage of the Andes, as an evidence of the accuracy with which pictures of scenery may be impressed on the historian's imagination, and, through him, upon the reader's, without the original objects ever having been present to the eye of either. The account of the massacre at Caxamalca is also exceedingly vivid and true, and is probably one of the most splendid passages in Mr. Prescott's works. After this bloody, treacherous, and cowardly murder, Pizarro addressed his troops before they retired for the night. When he had ascertained that not a man was wounded, "he bade them offer up thanksgivings to Providence for so great a miracle — without its care they could never have prevailed so easily over the host of their enemies; and he trusted their lives had been reserved for still greater things." No invective, though steeped in fire. and gall, is calculated to excite so much detestation as this simple statement of the murderer's blasphemous. hypocrisy. It is one of those monstrosities of canting guilt," on which a fiend might make an epigram."

It is curious to observe, in the tangled web of intrigue, treachery, and murder, which meets us in the history of the conquest, how the moral laws which were violated by the conquerors avenged themselves. Murder generated murder, and misery brought forth misery. First, Atahualpa was murdered by a legal farce got up by Almagro and Pizarro; then Almagro was murdered in the same way by Pizarro; Pizarro, in his turn, was assas

SHAKSPEARE'S CRITICS.*

THOSE Who consider the science of criticism as nothing more than a collection of arbitrary rules, and the art of criticism but their dextrous or declamatory application, rejoice in a system of admirable simplicity and barren results. It has the advantage of judging everything and accounting for nothing, thus gratifying the pride of intellect without enjoining any intellectual exertion. By a steady adherence to its doctrines, a dunce may exalt himself to a pinnacle of judgment, from which the first authors of the world appear as splendid madmen, whose enormous writhings and contortions, as they occasionally blunder into grace and grandeur of motion, show an undisciplined strength, which would, if subjected to rule, produce great effects. A Bond-street exquisite complacently surveying a thunder-scarred Titan through an opera-glass, is but a type of a Grub-street critic measuring a Milton or a Shakspeare with his three-foot rule. But the golden period of this kind of criticism, when mediocrity sat cross-legged on the body of genius, and

*Shakspeare's Plays, with his Life. Illustrated with many hundred Wood-cuts, executed by H. W. Hewet, after designs by Kenny Meadows, Harvey, and others. Edited by Gulian C. Verplanck, LL.D., with Critical Introductions, Notes, etc., Original and Selected. New York: Harper & Brothers. 3 vols. 8vo.

ner.

Lectures on Shakspeare. By H. N. Hudson. New York: Baker & Scrib 2 vols. 12mo. - North American Review, July, 1848. VOL. II.

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