hen sweeps by a trace of Lope de Vega, a word
that reminds us of Calderon, while still oftener the euphuism of Gongora
pervades the writer's mind and flows in platitudes from his guarded pen.

As we near our own day, history is invested with new dignities; its arms
float, sea-weed like, on the raging waves of political life, as if to
grasp from some fragment of shipwrecked treaties or some passing argosy
of government a precious jewel to light its deep researches. It takes in
with nervous grasp the tendencies of literature; its keen gaze drinks in
the features of popular belief and searches out the fountains of popular
error. Fully equal to the requirements of the exacting age, Motley has
produced a work whose lightest merit is its equal conformity to the new
rules of his art. He possesses in an eminent degree the first
qualification which the old Abbe de Mably, in his _Maniere d'ecrire
l'histoire_, insists upon for the historian. He recognizes the natural
rights of man, those rights which are the same in every age, and as
powerful in their demands in the sixteenth century as in the nineteenth.
His well-balanced mind acknowledges and respects the duties of man as
citizen and magistrate, and the mutual rights of nations. No splendor,
no power, no prejudice, has been able to seduce him from his high
principles, neither does a warm and manifest sympathy with his subject
delude him even into the passing extravagance of an undue praise. If he
comprehends the greatness of the national character he almost flings
upon the canvas before us, he appreciates as profoundly its weaknesses
too. Strada's history is a poison, which strikes at the very roots of
society, and would wither all the fresh young leaves of its vigorous
spring. Motley's is its powerful antidote, which restores the juices of
life to the brittle fibres, smooths out the shriveled leaves, and
clothes them again with the fresh green of hope and promise. Strada is
the slave of the victor; Motley is the champion of the vanquished.
Strada bends the dignity of Justice before the painted sceptre of
Despotism; Motley exalts the honest title of the man above the will of
the perjured monarch. Strada gilds with the false gold of sophistry the
very chains that gall his soul; Motley sharpens on the clear crystal of
his unobtrusive logic, the two-handed sword of power, and cuts his way
through an army of protocols and pacts to the fortress of Liberty.

It is, we believe, an expl