Mr. Helps is rendering a substantial service to history and to popular literature, by this re-cast and republication of biographies from his greater work on the 'Spanish Conquest of America.' As he proceeds his interest in his work deepens. So far from this life of Cortes being the carving out of a journeyman, under Mr. Helps' superintendence, it is practically a new work, upon which much patient thought and loving labour has been expended. While Mr. Helps has properly enough made use of that part of his history which relates to the conquest of Mexico, he has, he tells us, gone 'carefully over every sentence quoted from that history, to see whether, by the aid of additional knowledge, he could correct or improve it.' He has also added much new material, especially to those parts which relate to the private life of Cortes. Mr. Helps has the great gift of succinctness. He never wearies us, but often makes us wish that his canvas was filled in with more detail. His style, as readers of 'Friends in Council' know, is dignified, easy, archaic, and sententious. His narrative abounds in sage reflections and wise apothegms--he has a knack of condensing a philosophy into an epigram. A common-place book might be greatly enriched by choice sentences from these volumes. Mr. Helps' impartiality is very rigid, and his summaries of character and of the moral quality of actions severe. His narrative does not flow into glowing descriptions or romantic enthusiasm. He is always calmly, we might say coldly, master of himself. He has a dread of brilliant writing, but he attains to archaic picturesqueness, and arrests the interest of his readers while he satisfies the judgment of his critics. Not Hallam himself is more scrupulously accurate. Mr. Helps is as unlike Prescott as any two writers of history can be: but his minute accuracy, if it does not produce broad effects, determines exact relations, and with enough of literary skill to make the result very pleasing. The noble virtues and the signal faults of the great soldier are admirably discriminated. On the whole, we admire more than we blame. Cortes was a great-minded, generous-hearted, religious-souled man. Nothing in history could be more unjustifiable than the siege of Mexico, and the massacre of its brave inhabitants, of whom 50,000 were slain--nearly the number estimated as killed in the recent horrors of Paris; but we must not try him by the notions of our nineteenth century. The civilized splendour of the Mexicans almost provokes incredulity. Mr. Helps has to assure even Mr. Carlyle of it; and the evidence abundantly establishes it. We heartily thank Mr. Helps for his book, and trust he will complete his series after its model.