“To Prescott belongs the rare distinction of uniting solid merit
with extensive popularity. He has been exalted to the first class
of historians, both by the popular voice and the suffrages of the
learned. By avoiding all tricks of flippancy or profundity to
court any class of readers, he has pleased all.”—_E. P. Whipple._
“Mr. Prescott’s leading excellence is that healthy objectiveness
of mind which enables him to represent persons and events in
their just relation. The scenery, characters and incidents
with which his history deals, are all conceived with singular
intensity, and appear on his page instinct with their peculiar
life. 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.”—_Review._
Isabella of Spain and Elizabeth of England.
It is in the amiable qualities of her sex that Isabella’s superiority
becomes most apparent over her illustrious namesake, Elizabeth of
England, whose history presents some features parallel to her own. Both
were disciplined in early life by the teachings of that stern nurse of
wisdom, adversity. Both were made to experience the deepest humiliation
at the hands of their nearest relative, who should have cherished and
protected them. Both succeeded in establishing themselves on the throne
after the most precarious vicissitudes. Each conducted her kingdom
through a long and triumphant reign, to a height of glory which it
had never before reached. Both lived to see the vanity of all earthly
grandeur, and to fall the victims of an inconsolable melancholy; and both
left behind an illustrious name, unrivaled in the subsequent annals of
the country.
But with these few circumstances of their history, the resemblance
ceases. Their characters afford scarcely a point of contact. Elizabeth,
inheriting a large share of the bold and bluff King Harry’s temperament,
was haughty, arrogant, coarse, irascible; while with these fiercer
qualities she mingled deep dissimulation and strange irresolution.
Isabella, on the other hand, tempered the dignity of royal station
with the most bland and courteous manners. Once resolved, she was
constant in her purposes; and her conduct in public and private life
was characterized by candor and integrity. Both may be said to have
shown that magnanimity which is implied by the accomplishment of great
objects in the face of great obstacles. But Elizabeth was desperately
selfish; she was incapable of forgiving, not merely a real injury, but
the slightest affront to her vanity; and she was merciless in exacting
retribution. Isabella, on the other hand, lived only for others—was ready
at all times to sacrifice self to considerations of public duty; and far
from personal resentments, showed the greatest condescension and kindness
to those who had most sensibly injured her; while her benevolent heart
sought every means to mitigate the authorized severities of the law, even
toward the guilty.
Both possessed rare fortitude. Isabella, indeed, was placed in situations
which demanded more frequent and higher displays of it than her rival;
but no one will doubt a full measure of this quality in the daughter
of Henry the Eighth. Elizabeth was better educated, and every way more
accomplished than Isabella. But the latter knew enough to maintain
her station with dignity; and she encouraged learning by a munificent
patronage. The masculine powers and passions of Elizabeth seemed to
divorce her in a great measure from the peculiar attributes of her sex;
at least from those which constitute its peculiar charm; for she had
abundance of its foibles—a coquetry and love of admiration which age
could not chill; a levity most careless, if not criminal; and a fondness
for dress and tawdry magnificence of ornament which was ridiculous, or
disgusting, according to the different periods of life in which it was
indulged. Isabella, on the other hand, distinguished through life for
decorum of manners and purity beyond the breath of calumny, was content
with the legitimate affection which she could inspire within the range
of her domestic circle. Far from a frivolous affectation of ornament or
dress, she was most simple in her own attire, and seemed to set no value
on her jewels, but as they could serve the necessities of the state;
when they could be no longer useful in this way, she gave them away to
her friends. Both were uncommonly sagacious in the selection of their
ministers, though Elizabeth was drawn into some errors in this particular
by her levity, as was Isabella by religious feeling. It was this,
combined with her excessive humility, which led to the only grave errors
in the administration of the latter. Her rival fell into no such errors,
and she was a stranger to the amiable qualities which led to them.
The circumstances of their deaths, which were somewhat similar, displayed
the great dissimilarity of their characters. Both pined amidst their
royal state, a prey to incurable despondency rather than any marked
bodily distemper. In Elizabeth it sprung from wounded vanity, a sullen
conviction that she had outlived the admiration on which she had so long
fed—and even the solace of friendship and the attachment of her subjects.
Nor did she seek consolation, where alone it was to be found in that sad
hour. Isabella, on the other hand, sunk under a too acute sensibility to
the sufferings of others. But amidst the gloom which gathered around her,
she looked with the eye of faith to the brighter prospects which unfolded
of the future; and when she resigned her last breath, it was amidst the
tears and universal lamentations of her people.
The Character of Cortés.
His character is marked with the most opposite traits, embracing
qualities apparently the most incompatible. He was avaricious, yet
liberal; bold to desperation, yet cautious and calculating in his plans;
magnanimous, yet very cunning; courteous and affable in his deportment,
yet inexorably stern; lax in his notions of morality, yet (not uncommon)
a sad bigot. The great feature in his character was constancy of purpose;
a constancy not to be daunted by danger, nor baffled by disappointment,
nor wearied out by impediments and delays.
He was a knight-errant, in the literal sense of the word. Of all the
band of adventurous cavaliers whom Spain, in the sixteenth century, sent
forth on the career of discovery and conquest, there was none more deeply
filled with the spirit of romantic enterprise than Hernando Cortés.
Dangers and difficulties, instead of deterring, seemed to have a charm
in his eyes. They were necessary to rouse him to a full consciousness of
his powers. He grappled with them at the outset, and, if I may so express
myself, seemed to prefer to take his enterprises by the most difficult
side. He conceived, at the first moment of his landing in Mexico, the
design of its conquest. When he saw the strength of its civilization, he
was not turned from his purpose. When he was assailed by the superior
force of Narvaez, he still persisted in it; and, when he was driven in
ruin from the capital, he still cherished his original idea. After the
few years of repose which succeeded the conquest, his adventurous spirit
impelled him to that dreary march across the marshes of Chiapa; and,
after another interval, to seek his fortunes on the stormy Californian
Gulf. When he found that no other continent remained for him to conquer,
he made serious proposals to the emperor to equip a fleet at his own
expense, with which he would sail to the Moluccas, and subdue the Spice
Islands for the Crown of Castile!
This spirit of knight-errantry might lead us to undervalue his talents as
a general, and to regard him merely in the light of a lucky adventurer.
But this would be doing him injustice, for Cortés was certainly a great
general, if that man be one, who performs great achievements with the
resources which his own genius has created. There is probably no instance
in history where so vast an enterprise has been achieved by means
apparently so inadequate.