the original was preserved, and, prompted by his literary zeal, obtained an order from the government for its publication. Under his supervision the work was put in order for the press, and Oviedo’s biographer, Alvarez y Baena, assures us that a complete edition of it, prepared with the greatest care, would soon be given to the world. (Hijos de Madrid (Madrid, 1790), tom. ii. pp. 354-361.) It still remains in manuscript.{*} {*} [The _Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Islas y Tierrafirme del Mar Océano, por El Capitan Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdéz, Primer Cronista del Nuevo Mundo_, was published in four volumes at Madrid, 1851-55, by the Real Academia de la Historia.--M.] No country has been more fruitful in the field of historical composition than Spain. Her ballads are chronicles done into verse. The chronicles themselves date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Every city, every small town, every great family, and many a petty one, has its chronicler. These were often mere monkish chroniclers, who in the seclusion of the convent found leisure for literary occupation. Or, not unfrequently, they were men who had taken part in the affairs they described, more expert with the sword than with the pen. The compositions of this latter class have a general character of that indifference to fine writing which shows a mind intent on the facts with which it is occupied, much more than on forms of expression. The monkish chroniclers, on the other hand, often make a pedantic display of obsolete erudition, which contrasts rather whimsically with the homely texture of the narrative. The chronicles of both the one and the other class of writers may frequently claim the merit of picturesque and animated detail, showing that the subject was one of living interest, and that the writer’s heart was in his subject. Many of the characteristic blemishes of which I have been speaking may be charged on Oviedo. His style is cast in no classic mould. His thoughts find themselves a vent in tedious, interminable sentences, that may fill the reader with despair; and the thread of the narrative is broken by impertinent episodes that lead to nothing. His scholarship was said to be somewhat scanty. One will hardly be led to doubt it, from the tawdry display of Latin quotations with which he garnishes his pages, like a poor gallant who would make the most of his little store of finery. He affected to take the elder Pliny as his model, as appears from the preface to his _Sumario_. But his own work fell far short of the model of erudition and eloquence which that great writer of natural history has bequeathed to us.