established, he sought to reap new glory by exploring the Pacific Ocean; and in 1536 he discovered the peninsula of California, and surveyed part of the gulf which separates it from the American continent. But from that country neither profit nor honour, unless as a geographical discoverer, could be gained; and the result of the expedition neither satisfied the expectations of others, nor repaid the adventurers for the hardships which they underwent. In 1540, wearied and disgusted, Cortez returned to Spain, and found his services forgotten, or at least his person slighted. He served as a volunteer in 1541, in Charles V.’s expedition against Algiers, and had a horse killed under him. This was his last military action. After wearying his proud spirit in fruitless attempts to gain attention from Charles or his ministers to his real or supposed grievances, he retired into seclusion, and died at Seville, December 2, 1547, in the sixty-third year of his age. We have passed rapidly over the shocking cruelties which marked the progress of the Spanish arms. Some portion of the horror, with which we naturally regard the actors in such events, may be neutralized by the consideration, that men’s notions in all things, and perhaps most especially in matters of international justice, are greatly dependent on the spirit of the time in which they live; and that it is hardly fair to judge actions, which won the admiration of contemporaries, according to the standard of a subsequent age. But even in that age there were not wanting many to raise an indignant voice against the cruelties practised on an unoffending people; and after every just allowance has been made, it is not to be doubted that the treatment of the American aborigines forms a foul stain on the history of Spain, and loads all who were concerned in it with an awful responsibility; and we willingly acknowledge it to have been a just retribution, that of the original settlers few reaped prosperity, repose, or wealth, as the harvest of their arms. With their leaders it was eminently otherwise. Scarce one of those who led the conquerors of Peru escaped a violent death in civil strife; while Cortez (with whom no one divides the fame of conquering Mexico) lived to experience the proverbial ingratitude of courts, and died in that forced obscurity which is most galling to an ambitious mind. The noble inscription, composed by Southey for the birth-place of Cortez’s early companion in arms and rival in fame, needs but the change of name to render it equally applicable to Cortez himself.