Nor is it alone as a soldier, at this time, that we are called on to appreciate the talents of our hero. Whilst he planned, fought, travelled, retreated, and diplomatised, he kept an accurate account of the adventures of his troop; and, in his celebrated letters to the Emperor, he has presented us a series of military memoirs, which, after three hundred years, furnish, in reality, the best, but least pretending, narrative of the conquest. Other contemporaries, looking upon the scenes from a variety of points, may serve to add interesting details and more copious illustration to the story; but they support without diminishing the value and truth of the despatches of Cortéz. The conqueror, in truth, was one of those men whose minds seem to reach results intuitively. Education often ripens genius, as the genial sun and air mature the fruits of the earth which would languish without them. But we sometimes find individuals whose dealings on earth are to be chiefly in energetic and constant action with their fellow creatures, and who are gifted with a finer tact which enables them to penetrate the hearts of all they approach, and by this skilful detection of character are empowered to mould them to their purposes. There are, it is true, many subordinate qualities, besides the mere perceptive faculties, that are needful in such a person. He must possess self-control and discrimination in a remarkable degree. His courage and self-reliance must be unquestionable. He must be able to win by gentleness as well as to control by command or to rule by stratagem; for there are persons whom neither kindness, reason nor authority can lead, but who are nevertheless too important to be disregarded in such an enterprise as that of the conquest of Mexico.