attering notice." He has been misled by his
inability to comprehend the employment of courteous language between
persons who differ from each other in matters of opinion. With the
accustomed suavity of a Frenchman and a gentleman, M. St. Hilaire
declines entering into a discussion with Mr. Wilson, and leaves him to
"settle this difference with his learned fellow-citizen," Mr. Prescott,
mildly intimating at the same time that he will probably have "his hands
full."

Something more remains to be said of the use which our author has made
of the learned professor of the Sorbonne. One page of his book Mr.
Wilson devotes to "Acknowledgments." These are few, but ponderous.
"Acknowledgments are made" to the Hon. Lewis Cass, for having
written--without any ulterior view, we imagine, to Mr. Wilson's
advantage--the before-mentioned article in the "North American Review";
to the late Mr. Gallatin, for the publication--also, we suspect, without
any foresight of the tremendous uses to which it was to be turned--of a
paper on the Mexican dialects; to "Aaron Erickson, Esq., of Rochester,
N.Y., for the advantages he has afforded us in the prosecution of our
arduous investigations"; to "Major Robert Wilson, now at Fort Riley,
Kanzas," for no particular reason expressed; and to "M. _Rousseau
de_ St. Hilaire, both for the flattering notice he has taken of our
preliminary work" (why not, "work preliminary?") "on Mexico, and for the
advantages derived from his writings." In regard to the "advantages"
here mentioned, we are going to relieve Mr. Wilson's mind. His
obligations to M. St. Hilaire are really far lighter than he supposes.
It is true that he has picked most of the little information he
possesses in regard to Spanish history out of the professor's work, and
has strewed his pages with copious extracts from this recondite source.
But, in making his acknowledgments, he might have gone still farther
back. M. St. Hilaire is a laborious and enthusiastic scholar.

He has found time, in the midst of his professional duties, to write
a really meritorious work on the history of Spain. But he had not the
time, perhaps not the opportunity, for making a thorough examination of
the original authorities. He was therefore obliged to take for his guide
a modern author, who had made this history the peculiar field of his
researches. The guide whom he selected, and he could have made no better
choice, was William Hickling Prescott. So necessary was it