WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT (1796-1859)

William Hickling Prescott, grandson of the hero of Bunker Hill, was born at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1796, and was graduated at Harvard College in the class of 1814. An accident in his senior year nearly deprived him of his eyesight and compelled him for the rest of his life to make use of all the expedients open to the blind student. Inheriting ample means, he was enabled to travel extensively abroad, to employ secretaries and research experts and readers, and to follow to the full his scholarly inclinations which all led, as Irving before him had been led, into the fascinating field of Spanish history. His Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, which was the result of eleven years of patient work, appeared in 1837, his History of the Conquest of Mexico in 1843, and his History of the Conquest of Peru in 1847. His uncompleted History of Philip II was published after his death.

The writings of Prescott, unlike those of most modern historians, belong distinctively to literature. Like Macaulay's work, they have a distinctive style. Prescott was a transition figure: he rejected the stately pompousness of Gibbon and wrote in simple flowing sentences, yet he must be reckoned to-day with the old rather than with the new. He was not romantic in his interpretation of history; rather was he severely classical, and yet he had all the power of a Scott to make stirring scenes alive and thrilling, and to reproduce the atmosphere of a great event. His works as histories have been superseded: they are, in the light of modern research and modern methods, superficial and wrongly emphasized and unphilosophical; they survive now on account of their literary qualities.

RETURN OF COLUMBUS

Great was the agitation in the little community of Palos, as they beheld the wellknown vessel of the admiral re-entering 5 their harbor. Their desponding imaginations had long since consigned him to a watery grave; for, in addition to the preternatural horrors which hung over the voyage, they had experienced the most to stormy and disastrous winter within the recollection of the oldest mariners. Most of them had relatives or friends on board. They thronged immediately to the shore to assure themselves with their own eyes 15 of the truth of their return. When they beheld their faces once more, and saw them accompanied by the numerous evidences which they brought back of the success of the expedition, they burst forth 20 in acclamations of joy and gratulation. They awaited the landing of Columbus. when the whole population of the place accompanied him and his crew to the principal church, where solemn thanks- 25 givings were offered up for their return; while every bell in the village sent forth a joyous peal in honor of the glorious event. The admiral was too desirous of

presenting himself before the sovereigns, to protract his stay long at Palos. He took with him on his journey specimens of the multifarious products of the newlydiscovered regions. He was accompanied by several of the native islanders, arrayed in their simple barbaric costume, and decorated, as he passed through the principal cities, with collars, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold, rudely fashioned. He exhibited also considerable quantities of the same metal in dust, or in crude masses, numerous vegetable exotics, possessed of aromatic or medicinal virtue, and several kinds of quadrupeds unknown in Europe, and birds whose varieties of gaudy plumage gave a brilliant effect to the pageant. The admiral's progress through the country was everywhere impeded by the multitudes thronging forth to gaze at the extraordinary spectacle, and the more extraordinary man, who, in the emphatic language of that time, which has now lost its force from its familiarity, first revealed the existence of a 'New World.' As he passed through the busy, populous city of Seville, every window. balcony, and housetop, which could afford a glimpse of him, is described to have been