During the first ten years of preparation he was a frequent contributor to the Reviews, writing some of the papers which are printed in the volume of “Miscellanies” which has always formed part of his “works.” His historical work was accomplished with the utmost difficulty. American scholarship was not then advanced, and it was almost impossible to secure readers who possessed a knowledge of foreign languages. Pathetically Mr. Prescott tells of the difficulties surmounted. The secretary he employed at first knew no language but his own. “I taught him to pronounce the Castilian in a manner suited, I suspect, much more to my ear than to that of a Spaniard; and we began our wearisome journey through Mariana’s noble history. I cannot even now recall to mind without a smile the tedious hours in which, seated under some old trees in my country residence, we pursued our slow and melancholy way over pages which afforded no glimmering of light to him, and from which the light came dimly struggling to me through a half intelligible vocabulary. But in a few weeks the light became stronger, and I was cheered by the consciousness of my own improvement; and when we had toiled our way through seven quartos I found I could understand the book when read about two-thirds as fast as ordinary English.” Having thus gathered the ideas of his many authorities from the mechanical lips of his secretary, Mr. Prescott would ponder them for a time, and would then dictate the notes for a chapter of from forty to fifty pages. These notes were read and reread to him while the subject was still fresh in his memory. He ran them over many times in his mind before he began to dictate the final copy, and was thus able to escape errors into which men with full command of their sight frequently fall. For the last thirty years of his life he made use of a writing instrument for the blind, the noctograph, by which he was able to write his own pages and partially to dispense with dictation. With the noctograph he wrote with great rapidity, but in an almost illegible hand which only the author and his secretary could read.