of 1823 he was appointed director of the hydrographic department, and he became for many years in fact, if not in name, the great and chief naval authority of Spain; and this without prejudice to his literary activity. In 1825 appeared the first two volumes of his Collection of Voyages; the third appeared in 1829; the fourth and fifth in 1837; while the sixth and seventh were still unfinished at the author's death. On the publication of the _Estatuto Real_, in 1834, he received a place in the new peerage, and sat afterward as senator for his own province, in almost every legislature. But his studious life and pacific character were hardly destined to shine in a political career, nor was it for the interest of science that they should. In the winter of 1844, in the seventy-ninth year of his age, Navarrete died. The Academy issued a posthumous work of his in 1846, a dissertation on the history of the nautical and mathematical sciences in Spain. A collection of his smaller works, _Coleccion de Opúsculos_, was begun in 1848 by his son. The two volumes which have already appeared consist mainly of short biographies of Spanish navigators and literary men, previously scattered in periodicals and in the transactions of the various academies and societies. Navarrete was a man of learning and research, as clearly appears; inclined somewhat to verbosity; tiresome to most readers, though pronounced _elegante y castizo_ by his contemporaries. Of the historical value of his works, however, there is but one opinion. Humboldt speaks of his Collection of Voyages as 'one of the most important monuments of modern times,' and calls him 'the most accurate historian of the geographical discoveries on the New Continent.' The Baron de Zach, M. de Berthelot, Prescott, Helps, Irving, and Stirling, have all given him much consideration. Indeed, the friends of Navarrete cannot complain that he has not been honored. Decorated with grand orders, member in high place of many academies and societies, his lot was more fortunate than is usual among literary men. The parts of Navarrete's collection which bear most directly upon this history are: _Relacion de Diego de Porras_, i. 282-96; _Carta que escribió D. Cristóbal Colon_, i. 296-313; _Relacion hecha por Diego Mendez_, i. 314-29; _Cartas de Colon_, i. 330-52; _Viages Menores_, iii. 1-74; _Real cédula por la cual, con referencia á lo capitulado con Diego de Nicuesa y Alonso de Hojeda_, iii. 116-17; _Noticias biográficas del capitan Alonso Hojeda_, iii. 163-76; and the _Establecimientos ó Primeras Poblaciones de los Españoles en el Darien_, including instructions to Pedrarias, letters of Vasco Nuñez, memorial of Rodrigo de Colmenares, and the relation of Pascual de Andagoya, iii. 337-459.