The author’s fame was now fully established. He was everywhere regarded as one of the greatest of living historians, and honors and wealth flowed steadily towards him. His income from his books was very large. Stirling estimates it at from £4000 to £5000 per annum. This, in addition to the fortune he had inherited, made Mr. Prescott a very wealthy man in the years when the enormous incomes of to-day were hardly dreamed of. He was as methodical and careful in pecuniary affairs as in his literary work. A most accurate account was kept of his receipts and expenditures, and one-tenth of his income was always devoted to charity. In 1850 he made a short visit to Europe, spending some time upon the Continent but more in England and Scotland. Everywhere he was lionized in a way that would have turned the heads of most men. The University of Oxford made him a D.C.L. The doors of the houses where learning was honored opened at his approach. His own charming personality was, however, one of the greatest factors in his social success. As a man he was most lovable. Upon his return to America he devoted himself to writing the “History of the Reign of Philip the Second,” for which task he had accumulated an extensive collection of documentary “authorities.” This work was to appear in six volumes, and for it the author was offered £1000 a volume by two publishers. Two volumes were published in 1855 and a third appeared three years later. Macaulay pronounced “Philip the Second” Mr. Prescott’s best work. Its style is more finished, its use of authorities more masterly than in the previous volumes. For dramatic interest the chapters describing the defence of Malta by the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem are quite equal to the account of the “Triste Noche,” of Cortés and his companions in Mexico, which so excited the admiration of Stirling. But the work was never to be completed. After two volumes had appeared, there was published “Prescott’s Edition of Robertson’s Charles the Fifth.” This was simply a new edition of the Scottish historian’s work, with additions dealing with the later years of the Emperor’s life which Robertson had not treated. In it is given the true story of the emperor’s retirement and death. Mr. Prescott had for Robertson a very great admiration. He always acknowledged his deep obligation to him, and he felt that it would be most unnecessary, and in fact almost presumptuous, for him to attempt to re-write a history which the Scottsman had written so well. In these three works, “Ferdinand and Isabella,” “Charles the Fifth,” and “Philip the Second,” a century and a half of the most important part of Spanish history is presented. That Prescott did not live to complete the third must always be regarded as a great calamity by the literary world.