Nor is our admiration of the characteristics we have endeavored to sketch, diminished when we examine the elements of the original army that flocked to the standard of Cortéz. The Spanish court and camps,--the Spanish towns and sea-ports,--had sent forth a motley band to the islands. The sedate and worthier portions of Castilian society were not wooed abroad by the alluring accounts of the New World and its prolific wealth. They did not choose to leave hereditary homes and comfortable emoluments which made those homes the permanent abodes of contentment if not of luxury. But there were others in the dense crowds of Spain whose habits, disposition and education, fostered in them all the love of ease and elegance, without bestowing the means of gratifying their desires. These men regarded the New World as a short and easy road to opulence and distinction. There were others too, whose reckless or dissipated habits had wasted their fortunes and blasted their names in their native towns, and who could not bear to look upon the scenes of their youth, or the companions of their more fortunate days, whilst poverty and disgrace deprived them of the rights of free and equal social intercourse. These were the poor and proud;--the noisy and the riotous;--the soldier, half bandit, half warrior;--the sailor, half mutineer, half pirate;--the zealot whose bigotry magnified the dangers of Indian life into the glory of martyrdom; and the avaricious man who dreamed that the very sands of the Indian Isles were strewn with gems and gold. Among all this mass of wayward lust and ambition, there were some lofty spirits whose love of glory, whose passionate devotion to adventure, and whose genuine anxiety to spread the true word of God among the infidels, sanctified and adorned the enterprise, whilst their personal efforts and influence were continually directed towards the noble purpose of redeeming it from cruelty. These men recollected that posterity would set its seal upon their deeds, whilst many of them acted from a higher and purer Christian motive, devoid of all that narrow selfishness with which others kept their eyes fixed on the present and the future for the popular opinion that was to disgrace or dignify them on the pages of history. * * * * *