These, and, so far as we can discover, these alone, are the proofs on which Mr. Wilson convicts Bernal Diaz of being a nonentity,--of having, like Rosalind in "As you like it," merely "counterfeited to be a _man_." As a natural _sequitur_ to this delicious train of reasoning, he proceeds to take this nonentity, this "myth," as his guide throughout the narrative of the Conquest. "We may safely follow Diaz," he remarks, "in unimportant particulars"; and the "particulars" of the Conquest being, in Mr. Wilson's narration of them, all equally "unimportant," he is so far consistent in following Diaz throughout. Surely the Grecian fables will never grow old; here again we have blind Polyphemus groping in pursuit of cunning [Greek: Outis]. But we must be allowed to ask Mr. Wilson why he has not rather preferred to take Gomara as his guide. It is true that he entertains a strong loathing, a rooted aversion, for this harmless old chronicler, whom he calls always "Gomora,"--associating him, apparently, by some confusion of ideas, with the ancient city of bad fame, buried with Sodom beneath the waters of the Dead Sea. But, at least, he does not deny that Gomara had an actual existence, that he was a veritable somebody,--a reality, and not a "myth,"--that he was the chaplain of Cortés, that he had access to the papers of the great commander, that he wrote a history of the Conquest, and that this history is still extant. Mr. Wilson himself asserts that the dispatches of Cortés "and the work of Gomora are the only original documents touching the Conquest of Mexico, its people, its civilization, its difficulties, and its dangers." After this declaration, it is somewhat remarkable, that, throughout his narrative of the Conquest, while continually quoting from Diaz, he makes not a single reference to Gomara; and he even censures Mr. Prescott for having pursued a different course. How shall we explain this fact? Alas for Gomara! he wrote in his native Castilian, no Lockhart or Folsom had done him into English, and so he missed his chance of having his statements cited, and, possibly even,--though we should not like to hazard an assertion on this point,--of having his name correctly spelt, by the author of the "New History of the Conquest of Mexico."