informs us, that "Sarmiento's History of the Peruvian Incas altogether surpasses that of Dr. Johnson's Rasselas and the Happy Valley." The history of Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas" is related, we believe, by Boswell. The great moralist composed his beautiful and philosophical, but somewhat gloomy romance, in the evenings of a single week, in order to obtain the means of defraying the expenses of his mother's funeral. The story is a touching one; but Mr. Wilson's comparison is so inapt, that we cannot help suspecting him of having had in his mind, not the history of Johnson's "Rasselas," but Johnson's history of Rasselas. We think it rather hard, that, having, in general, such a limited amount of meaning to express, Mr. Wilson should have followed the maxim of Talleyrand, and employed language chiefly as a means of concealing his thoughts. Mr. Wilson nowhere asserts, in so many words, that he has had access to manuscript authorities. His mode of speaking of them, however, implies as much, and he evidently intends that this inference should be drawn by his readers. In a printed note, addressed to his publishers, disclaiming any intention of "assailing the memory of the dead,"--a disclaimer which was not needed to suggest the reason why his book, loaded with typographical blunders, was hurried through the press,[A]--he "insists on the lawyer's privilege of sifting the evidence--a labor which Mr. Prescott was incapable of performing, from a physical infirmity"; and he undertakes to prove that Mr. Prescott's "books and manuscripts were not reliable authorities." Now even "the lawyer's privilege" does not extend to sifting evidence which he has never heard; and if Mr. Prescott was "incapable, from a physical infirmity," of properly scrutinizing his authorities, it was the more necessary that Mr. Wilson, with his own wonderful eyes, should undertake the task. There is one manuscript which he might be supposed to have had a strong desire to examine. His book professes to be a vindication of "Las Casas' denunciations of the popular historians" of the Conquest. The work of Las Casas, supposed to contain these denunciations, is his History of the Indies. Mr. Wilson acknowledges that he has never seen this work; it has, he says, "been wholly suppressed"; and he is terribly severe on the censorship and the Inquisition for having been guilty of this suppression. But the only suppression in the case is, that the book has never been printed. The original manuscript may be consulted at Madrid. A copy of the most important parts of it is in Mr. Prescott's collection. Mr. Wilson might have seen that copy, had he expressed the wish. He did not, however, give himself this trouble; and we think he was right. The truth is, that, of all the Spanish historians of the Conquest of Mexico, Las Casas is the one who has indulged most largely in hyperbole. Writing, with little personal knowledge, in support of a theory which required him