THIS eminent historian was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on the fourth of May, 1796. His father, William Prescott, LL. D., who died at the good old age of eighty-two, in the last month of 1844, was a lawyer, and ranked among the noblest ornaments of his profession; and the general grief of the community at his loss, when he had so long been withdrawn from business and public life, afforded the most touching and honourable tribute to his intellectual and moral worth.* His grandfather was Colonel William Prescott, who commanded the American forces stationed in the redoubt at the memorable Battle of Bunker Hill, on the seventeenth of June, 1775, and with the undisciplined New England militia twice broke the ranks of the British grenadiers and light infantry, and drove them in confusion and dismay to their boats. His great-grandfather was also a man of much consideration, and was chosen the agent of the province to the English court in 1738, but declined the office, which was subsequently filled by Edmund Quincy. Few men have more reason to take an honest pride in their descent.

In his twelfth year Mr. Prescott removed with his family to Boston, and was there placed under the care of the Reverend Dr. Gardiner, one of the pupils of the celebrated Dr. Parr, by whom he was carefully instructed in the ancient classics, and carried through a range of study in the Latin and Greek authors, quite beyond the limits usually reached at that time in our public seminaries. After entering Harvard University, which he did in 1811, one year in advance, he continued his predi

The late William Prescott presented to his associates, throughout a long life, whether at the bar, or on the bench, or in the dignified retirement of his late years, such an eminent example of modest talent, substantial learning, and upretending wisdom, with affable manners, strong social affections, absolute fidelity in every rela tion of life, and probity beyond the slightest suspicion of reproach, as rarely adorns even the highest walks of professional excellence. Concerning whom may it be more appropriately asked than of him,

"Cui Pudor, et Justitiæ soror,

Incorrupta Fides, nudaque Veritas,

Quando ullum invenient parem?"-Daniel Webster. + Dr. Young's Discourse, occasioned by the Death of the Honourable William Prescott, LL.D

lections for the ancient masters; and while he gave little attention to the mathematics and the sister sciences, he employed his leisure hours, especially in the latter portion of his college life, exclusively in the study of his favourite authors. It was a matter of taste with him, but considering his subsequent occupations, he has not had reason to repent it. The chaste richness of his style could have resulted only from the happiest union of learning with genius.

On his leaving the university, in 1814, he embraced the study of the law, but prepared to give a preliminary year to more general reading. He had already made good progress in a course of historical study, when he was stopped by a violent rheumatic inflammation of the eye, occasioned probably by a too free use of it, especially at night, in the study of the Greek historians, with which he chiefly occupied himself. An accidental blow in college had previously deprived him of the sight of one of his eyes, though this is not apparent from any change in the appearance of it. This threw the whole burden of study on the remaining eye, which gave way more easily on that account. After a severe illness, in which, for a while, he was perfectly blind, he recovered his vision, but so much enfeebled that he was compelled to abandon his profession and reading altogether.

In the autumn of 1815 he went to Europe, and passed two years in England, France, and Italy; too young to derive a lasting profit from his travels, but yet, probably, enjoying the novel scenes opened to him with higher relish than he would at a later period. On the classic ground of Italy he revelled as in a land of enchantment. But his associations were wholly with the ancient people, who had passed away, and he felt an enthusiasm which might have cooled under the criticism of a riper age, as he trod the soil of Cicero and the Cæsars. After a gay dream of two years in the transatlantic countries, he returned to Boston, but not to resume his studies, 01 even to open a volume, for his eye was stil

too susceptible of inflammation. In the course of a few years he was married to a lady of his own city, and he remarks in a letter before me, that "contrary to the assertion of La Bruyère, who somewhere says that the most fortunate husband finds reason to regret his condition, at least once in every twenty-four hours,' I may truly say that I have found no such day in the quarter of a century that Providence has spared us to each other.”

In the beautiful library of Mr. Prescott at Boston, so richly stored with the rare printed works and manuscripts used in the composition of his histories, with portraits of the Catholic sovereigns and their servants who are his heroes, and with trophies more glorious than have been won in the tented fields of war which have been sent him by admiring scholars in foreign nations, I observed suspended over one of the book-cases two swords, crossed with an Indian calumet, and was told that they were worn at Bunker Hill by the great-grandsires of his children, one in the people's service, the other in the king's. Would that the two countries might for ever be united in as firm a bond of peace as that which binds these descendants of their two champions on that memorable day.

As Mr. Prescott grew older the inflammatory tendency of the system diminished, and his eye became less sensible to the fatigue of study. At first he used it sparingly, but in a few years he so far recovered it that he was enabled to indulge his taste for books to a very reasonable extent, and the deficiency was made up by a reader. He now devoted himself to the study of the continental languages and literatures, taking copious notes, and exercising his pen very freely in critical and miscellaneous essays, chiefly in the North American Review. A selection of thirteen of the papers written in this period has recently been published, and they are remarkable for the sustained case and felicity of expression, the fine enthusiasm and natural brilliancy, which in a still more eminent degree distinguish his later productions. The first article is a memoir of Charles Brockden Brown, to which I have been indebted in preparing the notice of that novelist in the present volume. Mr. Prescott does full justice to the remarkable series of fictions which "constitute an epoch in the ornamental literature of America," though I disagree with him, as I

have elsewhere intimated, upon some points in his criticism of Wieland. The subjects of the other papers are the Asylum for the Blind, Irving's Conquest of Granada, Cervantes, Molière, Chateaubriand's English Literature, Sir Walter Scott, Scottish Song, Bancroft's United States, Italian Narrative Poetry, Poetry and Romance of the Italians, and Da Ponte's Observations on Italian Literature. They but imperfectly indicate the range of his studies and attainments in literary and social history, as I find by consulting some of his other contributions to the Review; but they show that he was always equal to his theme in research, hearty appreciation, and acute critical judg ment. The book is "affectionately dedicated” to George Ticknor, to "remind him of studies pursued together in earlier days."*

Mr. Prescott kept before his dreaming vision the hopes of one day entering the arena of history, and achieving something that posterity might not willingly let die. Aspirations to this effect are in his diary as far back as 1819. He there allows ten years for preliminary studies, and ten more for the investiga tion and preparation of some specific historical work. The event nearly corresponded with this preconceived arrangement, and considering the lapse of time embraced by it, it is singular.

The subject which he selected for his first performance, the reign of the sovereigns under whose auspices the existence of this continent was first revealed to Europe, was a suitable one for an American. The period in which lived Isabella of Castile, the statesman Ximenes, the soldier Cordova, and the navigator Columbus; in which the empire of the Moors was subdued, the Inquisition was esta blished, the Jews were driven from Spain; and a new world was discovered and colonized, was not lacking in interest or importance, indeed, to tempt the most eminent historians to its illustration: yet the ground may be said to have been untrodden, since the only

*I should do my self injustice if I neglected to pay some tribute of respect to this gentleman, whose extraordinary erudition and elegant taste are so well known among contemporary scholars. He has published little, but that little makes us anxious for the appearance of some compositions upon which he is understood to have been many years engaged, among which is an elaborate History of the Spanish Language and Literature. His eminent qualifications, and the fulness of his resources, warrant the belief that this will be one of the most admirable works in our literature.

lives of Ferdinand and Isabella that had appeared are the meagre and unsatisfactory ones of the Abbé Mignot and Rupert Becker, one published in Paris in 1766, and the other in Prague in 1790.

Mr. Alexander H. Everett was our minister at the court of Spain when Mr. Prescott decided upon the choice of his subject, and through his aid and that of two other American gentlemen residing at the time in the Peninsula, he succeeded in obtaining whatever was known to exist that could not be supplied by the public and private libraries of his own city. Among the works thus procured were some brought to light by the researches of recent Spanish scholars, in the peculiar freedom of inquiry they have enjoyed, which gave him a great advantage over previous historians. In his preface he refers particularly to Llorente's History of the Inquisition, the analysis of the political institutions of the kingdom by such writers as Marina, Sempere, and Capmany; the version of the Spanish-Arab chronicles by Conde; the collections of Navarette, and the illustrations of the reign of Isabella by Clemencin, the Secretary of the Royal Academy of History; besides which he succeeded in obtaining various contemporary manuscripts, covering the whole ground of the narrative, none of which had been printed, and some of which were but little known to Spanish scholars.

When these literary treasures reached him, Mr. Prescott was not able to read even the title-pages of the volumes. He had strained the nerve of his eye by careless use of it, and it was several years before it recovered so far as to allow him to tax it again. By the sight of his Spanish treasures lying unexplored before him, he was filled with despair. He determined to try whether he could make the ears do the work of the eyes. He taught his reader, unacquainted with any language but his own, to pronounce the Spanish, though not exactly in the accent of the Court of Madrid. He read at a slow and stumbling pace, while the historian listened with painful attention. Practice at length made the work easier for both, though the reader never understood a word of his author. In this way they ploughed along patiently through seven Spanish quartos. He found at last he could go over about two-thirds as much in an hour as he could when read to in English. The ex

| periment was made, and he became convinced of the practicability of substituting the ear for the eye. He was overjoyed, for his library was no longer to consist of sealed volumes.

He now obtained the services of a secretary acquainted with the different ancient and modern languages. Still there were many impediments to overcome. His eye, however, gradually improved, and he could use it by daylight, (never again in the evening,) a few hours; though this was not till after some years, and then with repeated intervals of weeks, and sometimes months of debility. Many a chapter, and some of the severest, in Ferdinand and Isabella, were written almost wholly with the aid of the eyes of his secretary. His modus operandi was necessarily peculiar. He selected, first, all the authorities in the different languages that could bear on the topic to be discussed. He then listened to the reading of them, one after another, dictating very copious notes on each. When the survey was completed, a large pile of notes was amassed, which were read to him over and over again, until the whole had been embraced by his mind, when they were fused down into the consecutive contents of a chapter. When the subject was complex, and not pure narrative, requiring a great variety of reference, and sifting of contradictory authorities, the work must have been very difficult. But it strengthened memory, kept his faculties wide awake, and taught him to generalize; for the little details slipped through the holes in the memory.

His labour did not end with this process. He found it as difficult to write as to read, and procured in London a writing-case for the blind. This he could use in the dark as well as in the light. The characters, indeed, might pass for hieroglyphics, but they were deciphered by his secretary, and transferred by him to a legible form in a fair copy. Yet I have heard him say his hair sometimes stood on end at the woful blunders and misconceptions of the original, which every now and then, escaping detection, found their way into the first proof of the printer.

Amid such difficulties was the composition of Ferdinand and Isabella heroically completed, at the end of something less than ten years from its commencement. He remembered that Johnson says Milton gave up his History of England because it was scarcely