fluence of that cause for the promotion of which he labored with so much enthusiasm. No one can understand the "Washingtonian movement" who is not familiar, or does not make himself familiar, with the life of some such man as Hawkins.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF AMARIAH BRIGHAM, M. D.*-We are glad to see that an appropriate tribute to the memory of Dr. Amariah Brigham has been recently published. His name was for many years associated with the Insane Asylum at Hartford, Connecticut, where he was superintendent. Afterwards he held the same position at Utica, New York. His professional attainments and skill gave him an extended reputation. His social qualities will cause his memory to survive long in the minds of his numerous personal friends. The volume, of which we speak, will be interesting to those who knew him, for its development of his interior life, as well as for its delineation of the more public traits of his character.

CROSBY'S ANNUAL OBITUARY NOTICES FOR 1857.f-Hon. Nathan Crosby, of Lowell, Mass., has prepared a volume of Obituary Notices of Eminent Persons who have died in the United States during the year 1857. It is the first of a proposed annual series. The notices are much fuller than those which appear in the American Almanac, and the number of persons whose names are introduced is much larger. The compiler states in his preface that a large part of his information has been derived from newspaper cuttings, and acknowledges the liability to error from this cause. For the same reason, some of the articles are also more extended, relatively, than is proper. But the work, as a whole, is valuable, and the way to make succeeding volumes more complete is for those who are interested in the collection and preservation of such facts to communicate directly with the author.

PALISSY THE HUGUENOT POTTER.-A true narrative of the life of a pious Huguenot workman who lived in the sixteenth century. It gives

* Biographical Sketch of Amariah Brigham, M. D., late Superintendent of the New York State Lunatic Asylum. Utica: W. O. McClure. 1858.

+ Annual Obituary Notices of Eminent Persons who have died in the United States, for 1857. By Hon. NATHAN CROSBY. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1859. 8vo. pp. 432.

Palissy the Potter; or the Huguenot Artist, and Martyr. By C. L. BRIGHTWELL. Boston: Henry Hoyt. 1859. pp. 239. Also, published by Messrs. Carlton & Porter, New York. For sale by Hutchinson & Bullard, Hartford, and F. T. Jarman, New Haven.

the story of his perseverance for long years in the attempt to discover the way of making "white enamel;" his success after repeated and most disheartening disappointments; his religious faith which supported him in his days of poverty and obscurity, and exalted and ennobled his character afterward in the days of his prosperity when patronized by the Constable Montmorency. "Palissy vases," Palissy jugs," "dishes," and "goblets," were sought as the ornaments of the private collections of the great seigneurs of the land. His noble generosity then shone forth, for this "patriarch of the workshop," as he has been called, determined to make public all the secrets of his art, for the benefit of posterity. He commenced a course of lectures in Paris on earth, stones, metals, and fountains, and "other natures "-the first course of lectures on Natural History ever delivered in the French metropolis. These he repeated annually for many years.

A still deeper interest gathers around the closing years of his life, when having incurred the hatred of the Guises, for his steadfast refusal to give up his faith in the reformed religion, he was thrown into the Bastile. He had many powerful friends who sought to save him. The king himself visited him in his prison, and strove to induce him to save his life by a recantation; saying, "I find myself so pressed by the Guises and my own people that I am compelled to give you into the hands of my enemies." "Sire," replied Palissy, "I am ready to yield up my life to the glory of God. You say you feel pity for me. It is rather I that should pity you who utter such words as these, 'I am compelled.' This is not the language of a king, and neither yourself nor the Guises, with all your people, shall compel me; for I know how to die."

THE PERSIAN FLOWER.*-This is a memoir of Judith Grant, a gifted and amiable daughter of the Rev. Dr. Perkins, of the Nestorian Mission," who died at the age of twelve years. The glimpses of home-life among the various missionary families, which the narrative gives, cannot but increase the interest which the Christian community already feel for the brethren of that distant station.

The Persian Flower: A Memoir of Judith Grant Perkins, of Oroomiah, Persia. Boston: John P. Jewett & Co. 24mo. pp. 204.

HISTORY.

It is unfor

WILSON'S NEW HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO.* tunate for the author of this New History of the Conquest of Mexico, that the great man whose name is, in the apprehension not of Americans only, but of all students of history throughout the world, forever linked with the story of the heroic age of American discovery, has so recently departed from among us. For while our hearts are filled with sorrow at the loss which we have sustained in him, we can endure with less patience flippant and conceited attacks upon his capacity, and the value of the work he wrought, such as those with which the book before us is filled. In any event, however, it would have been impossible to avoid severely questioning a work put forth with so much pretension, with so much arrogant contempt for opinions, and works, and men, hitherto held in high and universal esteem, and with such complacent assumption of the right and the ability to inaugurate a new era of belief respecting the early history of America. What are Mr. Wilson's qualifications for the task which he has undertaken? He himself rehearses them for us. He is the son of an adopted member of the Iroquois tribe, and, having himself "lived long in a part of the country which once belonged to the Senecas," he has acquired such marvelous insight into all matters connected with the American aborigines, as has enabled him to discover that the pretended empire of Montezuma was but the counterpart of the Iroquois confederacy. He has lived three years and a half in California since the discovery of gold, and has so thoroughly mastered all the relations of a country in which precious metals occur, that be can pronounce that "it is not to be supposed that the Spaniards found the Aztecs in the possession of silver, notwithstanding the statements of Cortez." He has spent some time in Mexico, enough to show him that Humboldt's explanations of its physical phenomena are "in spite of the laws of gravity and capillary attraction," and that "he started from false premises, and of course his conclusions amount to nothing." But most of all, our author claims to be endowed with an instantaneous and infallible penetration: thus, "after a very superficial view of some outlying portions of these ruins," he "ventured to affirm, contrary

*A New History of the Conquest of Mexico. In which Las Casas' Denunciations of the Popular Historians of that War are fully vindicated. By ROBERT ANDERSON WILSON, etc. Philadelphia: James Challen & Son. 1859. 8vo.

pp. xx, 539.

to received notions, that they were extremely ancient, and had existed for thousands of years;" his critical sagacity is such as to raise him high above the herd of dull plodders who have been wont hitherto to take the business of history-making into their hands; he is full of sneers at "savans" and men of books; linguistic ethnologists come in for a special share of his contempt; he sums up their follies in this lucid and eloquent sentence: "with them the Persians and Saxons are alike offspring of the Sanscrit-and with the Bramins, have a common origin." The general results to which all these preparations and qualifications have guided our author may be briefly summed up as follows. All the Spanish authorities for the history of the conquest are lying braggarts, and whoever puts faith in them is a fool and blind. Their stories of the semi-civilization which they found in Mexico, of the organized empire, the cities, the wealth, the religious rites, the picturewriting, and the like, are impudent forgeries; the land was filled with nothing but naked savages. That the truth with regard to this never leaked out, is owing to-the Spanish Inquisition! All the monuments of culture described by the conquerors, of which the existence cannot conveniently be denied, because they are still to be seen, are-Phenician! Thus, from underneath Mr. Prescott's history the whole foundation falls away, and the work becomes a mere collection of fables; its author, however, is to be pitied rather than blamed, because of his "nonacquaintance with Indian character," and his "inability to make a personal research," and because "he could not have had the remotest idea of the circumstances under which his Spanish authorities had been produced," never having studied, we suppose, poor man! the Spanish history and institutions; in short, he had no insight, and could only repeat, like a school boy, the stories that were told him.

It is hardly necessary for us to characterize this whole theory of Mr. Wilson's as one of the most fantastic and absurd that was ever devised. The arguments by which its establishment is attempted are utterly nugatory. The denial of the Aztec civilization rests solely on the refusal of credence to whatever testimony affirms it; such wholesale incredulity taking the place, with our author, of historical criticism. The Phenician origin of the Central American remains is sustained by considerations which would equally prove it Armenian, or Hindu, or Kamtschatkan, or anything else one should choose. It is not too much to say that Mr. Wilson has not a particle of sound knowledge respecting the history and connections of ancient civilizations. Take an instance or two. "The Greeks, indeed, were but imitators of oriental

creations. Their mythology, even was foreign, and, that they could not comprehend, they expressed in myths and fables." The grammar and punctuation here, as well as the sentiment, are wholly our author's. "The Philistine, the Phenician, and the Egyptian deities, were manifestly of Hindoo origin." He is not aware that there are representations of Egyptian deities still in existence which are centuries older than the first dawn of Hindu civilization. "In Italy, the Etruscans, children of Japhet, Turdetani, then [i. e., 2000-1500 B. C.] created those memorials of their attainments in art-the vases that now defy competition." He is quite ignorant that the so-called Etruscan vases are, all of them, monuments of Greek art, being either the work of Greek artisans and artists, or imitations of Greek models.

The most remarkable exhibition of our author's critical acumen, however, occurs in the sixth chapter, which treats of the history of Spain from the most ancient times; such history being, for some reason not easily discoverable, regarded as a necessary introduction to that of the Mexican conquest. Mr. Wilson's chief authority for the earliest period is a certain "ponderous folio," dating from the end of the fifteenth century, a translation from the French: taken up by him, apparently, because it was old, and musty, and quaint, and because it was an original authority, no one else having ever thought of extracting history from it. It begins with telling how Osiris Denis, king of Egypt, (as if one were to read in an Irish chronicle of the exploits of Jupiter Patrick, king of Greece!) compassionating the unfortunate Spaniards, who were cruelly oppressed by Gerion, came to their succor and slew their tyrant, but gave back his kingdom to his sons, only bidding them behave themselves, and not follow their father's evil ways: and how that later, as they did not heed his lessons, he sent his son Hercules, who put them to death, pacified the country, set up the two "pillars of Hercules" at the straits, and placed the peninsula under the charge of his captains Hispan and Hispal, from whom it was afterwards called Hispaniola! This silly stuff is, to our acute and sagacious author, who snubs Humboldt, sneers at Prescott, cannot find words to express his contempt of Robertson, and despises all prior historians in a mass for their ignorant credulity-this to him is true and veracious history! We hardly expect to be believed when we affirm it; we could not believe, ourselves, until after repeated examination, that Mr. Wilson was not bringing forward such fables merely in order to laugh at them later. But no; his faith in them is undoubting; he is fully in earnest; he is able to point out in the Egyptian temples the precise picture which represents the battle between Osiris