rational theory of what may be expected from them in future.

"The part which I read with the greatest pleasure is, the discussion on the manners and character of the inhabitants of that New World. I have always thought with you that we possess at this time very great advantages towards the knowledge of human nature. We need no longer go to history to trace it in all stages and periods. History, from its comparative youth, is but a poor instructor. When the Egyptians called the Greeks children in antiquities, we may well call them children; and so we may call all those nations which were able to trace the progress of society only within their own limits. But now the great map of mankind is unrolled at once, and there is no state or gradation of barbarism, and no mode of refinement which we have not at the same moment under our view; the very different civility of Europe and of China; the barbarism of Persia and of Abyssinia; the erratic manners of Tartary and of Arabia; the savage state of North America and of New Zealand. Indeed you have made a noble use of the advantages you have had. You have employed philosophy to judge on manners, and from manners you have drawn new resources for philosophy. I only think that in one or two points you have hardly done justice to the savage character.

"There remains before you a great field. Periculosa plenum opus aleæ Tractas, et incedis per ignes Suppositos cineri doloso. When even those ashes will be spread over the present fire, God knows. I am heartily sorry that we are now supplying you with that kind of dignity and concern, which is purchased to history at the expense of mankind. I had rather by far that Dr. Robertson's pen were only employed in delineating the humble scenes of political economy, than the great events of a civil war. However, if our statesmen had read the book of human nature instead of the journals of the house of commons, and history instead of acts of parliament, we should not by the latter have furnished out so ample a page for the former. For my part, I have not been, nor am I very forward in my speculations on this

subject. All that I have ventured to make have hitherto proved fallacious. I confess, I thought the colonies left to themselves could not have made any thing like the present resistance to the whole power of this country and its allies. I did not think it could have been done without the declared interference of the house of Bourbon. But I looked on it as very probable that France and Spain would before this time have taken a decided part. In both these conjectures I have judged amiss. You will smile when I send you a trifling temporary production, made for the occasion of a day, and to perish with it, in return for your immortal work. But our exchange resembles the politics of the times. You send out solid wealth, the accumulation of ages, and in return you get a few flying leaves of poor American paper. However, you have the mercantile comfort of finding the balance of trade infinitely in your favor; and I console myself with the snug consideration of uninformed natural acuteness, that I have my warehouse full of goods at another's expense.

"Adieu, sir, continue to instruct the world; and whilst we carry on a poor unequal conflict with the passions and prejudices of our day, perhaps with no better weapons than other passions and prejudices of our own, convey wisdom at our expense to future generations."

After these testimonies to the excellence of the American History, joined to twenty years possession of the public favor, it may perhaps be thought presumption in me to interpose my own judgment with respect to its peculiar merits. I cannot help, however, remarking (what appears still more characteristical of this than of any of Dr. Robertson's other works) the comprehensive survey which he has taken of his vast and various subject, and the skilful arrangement by which he has bestowed connexion and symmetry on a mass of materials so shapeless and disjointed. The penetration and sagacity displayed in his delineation of savage manners, and the unbiassed good sense with which he has contrasted that state of society with civilized life, (a speculation in the prosecution of which so many of his predecessors had lost themselves in vague declamation or

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in paradoxical refinement) have been much and deservedly admired. His industry also and accuracy in collecting information with respect to the Spanish system of colonial policy, have received warm praise from his friends and from the public. But what perhaps does no less honor to the powers of his mind than any of these particulars is, the ability and address with which he has treated some topics that did not fall within the ordinary sphere of his studies; more especially those which border on the province of the natural historian. In the consideration of these, although we may perhaps, in one or two instances, have room to regret that he had not been still more completely prepared for the undertaking by previous habits of scientific disquisition, we uniformly find him interesting and instructive in the information he conveys; and happy, beyond most English writers, in the descriptive powers of his style. The species of description too in which he excels is peculiarly adapted to his subject; distinguished, not by those picturesque touches which vie with the effects of the pencil in presenting local scenery to the mind, but by an expression, to which language alone is equal, of the grand features of an unsubdued world. In these passages he discovers talents, as a writer, different from any thing that appears in his other publications; a compass and richness of diction the more surprising, that the objects described were so little familiarized to his thoughts, and, in more than one instance, rivalling the majestic eloquence which destined Buffon to be the historian of Nature.

After all, however, the principal charm of this, as well as of his other histories, arises from the graphical effect of his narrative, wherever his subject affords him materials for an interesting picture. What force and beauty of painting in his circumstantial details of the voyage of Columbus; of the first aspect of the new Continent; and of the interviews of the natives with the Spanish adventurers! With what animation and fire does he follow the steps of Cortes through the varying fortunes of his vast and hazardous career; yielding, it must be owned, somewhat too much to the influence of

the passions which his hero felt; but bestowing, at the same time, the warm tribute of admiration and sympathy on the virtues and fate of those whom he subdued! The arts, the institutions, and the manners of Europe and of America; but above all, the splendid characters of Cortes and of Guatimozin, enable him, in this part of his work, to add to its other attractions that of the finest contrasts which occur in history.

On these and similar occasions, if I may be allowed to judge from what I experience in myself, he seizes more completely than any other modern historian the attention of his reader, and transports him into the midst of the transactions which he records. His own imagination was warm and vigorous; and, although in the conduct of life it gave no tincture of enthusiasm to his temper, yet, in the solitude of the closet, it attached him peculiarly to those passages of history which approach to the romantic. Hence many of the characteristical beauties of his writings; and hence, too, perhaps, some of their imperfections. A cold and phlegmatic historian, who surveys human affairs like the inhabitant of a different planet, if his narrative should sometimes languish for want of interest, will at least avoid those prepossessions into which the writer must occasionally be betrayed, who, mingling with a sympathetic ardor among the illustrious personages whose story he contemplates, is liable, while he kindles with their generous. emotions, to be infected by the contagion of their prejudices and passions.

These effects, resulting naturally from a warm imagination, were heightened in Dr. Robertson by the vigor of an active and aspiring mind. It was not from the indifference produced by indolence or abstraction that he withdrew from the business of life to philosophy and letters. He was formed for action no less than speculation; and had fortune opened to him a field equal to his talents, he would have preferred, without hesitation (if I do not greatly mistake his character) the pursuits of the former to those of the latter. His studies were all directed to the great scenes of political exertion; and it was only because he wanted an opportunity to

sustain a part in them himself, that he submitted to be an historian of the actions of others. In all his writings the influence of the circumstances which I have now suggested may, I think, be traced; but in none of them is it so strongly marked as in the History of America. There he writes with the interest of one who had been himself an actor on the scene; giving an ideal range to his ambition among the astonishing events which he describes.

Perhaps, indeed, it must be owned, on the other hand, that if the excellencies of this performance are on a scale commensurate to the magnitude of the subject, it is in some respects more open to censure than any of his other productions. A partiality for the charms of eloquence and the originality of system displayed in the writings of Buffon and De Pau; a partiality natural to the enthusiasm of a congenial mind, has unquestionably produced a facility in the admission of many of their assertions which are now classed with the prejudices of former times. After allowing, however, to this charge all the weight it possesses, it ought to be remembered, in justice to Dr. Robertson, what important additions have been made since the time he wrote, to our knowledge both of America and of its aboriginal inhabitants; and that it is not from our present stock of information, but from what was then current in Europe, that an estimate can fairly be formed of the extent and accuracy of his researches. When he hazarded himself, like Columbus, in traversing an unknown ocean, and in surveying a New World, much, it might be expected, would be left to reward the industry of future adventurers. The disposition he has shown to palliate or to veil the enormities of the Spaniards in their American conquests, is a blemish of a deeper and more serious nature, to the impression of which I must content myself with opposing those warm and enlightened sentiments of humanity which in general animate his writings. A late candid and well-informed author, accordingly, after asserting that the conquest of the New World was effected (on a low estimate) by the murdering of ten millions of the species, and that the