Proud as I am of the names of Prescott and Irving, at whose shrines none worship with profounder admiration than myself; thankless as may be the task of criticising their classic pages, whose very defects shine with a steadier lustre than I dare hope for my brightest consummations; still, forced by my subject, in some instances, into fields partially traversed by them, I can neither pass them by nor wholly praise them. In justice to my theme, in justice to myself, in justice to the age in which I live, I must speak, and that according to the light and the perceptions given me. Mr Irving's estimate of the value of honesty and integrity in a historian may be gathered from his own pages. "There is a certain meddlesome spirit," he writes, "which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names from such pernicious erudition. It defeats one of the most salutary purposes of history, that of furnishing examples of what human genius and laudable enterprise may accomplish." Now, if conscientious inquiry into facts signifies a meddlesome spirit; if the plain presentment of facts may rightly be called pernicious erudition; if the overthrow of fascinating falsehood is mutilating the trophies of history; if fashioning golden calves for the worship of the simple be the most salutary purpose of history; then I, for one, prefer the meddlesome spirit and the pernicious erudition which mutilates such monuments to the fairest trophies of historical deception. Again—"Herrera has been accused also of flattering his nation; exalting the deeds of his countrymen, and softening and concealing their excesses. There is nothing very serious in this accusation. To illustrate the glory of his nation is one of the noblest offices of the historian; and it is difficult to speak too highly of the extraordinary enterprises and splendid actions of the Spaniards in those days. In softening their excesses he fell into an amiable and pardonable error, if it were indeed an error for a Spanish writer to endeavor to sink them in oblivion." When a writer openly avows his allegiance to falsehood, to amiable falsehood, to falsehood perpetrated to deceive in regard to one's own country, about which one professes to know more than a stranger, nothing remains to be said. Nothing remains to be said as to the veracity of that author, but much remains to be said concerning the erroneous impressions left by him of the persons and events coming in the way of this work.