cknowledge it.

The author, while living, was never rewarded for the great services he
had rendered his country, and it is remarkable that, after his death,
his very memoirs were pillaged by court historians, to raise a literary
monument to themselves.

Most of the other writers on the conquest, particularly the Spanish,
have filled their works with exaggerations, to create astonishment and
false interest; pages are filled with so termed philosophical remarks,
which but ill supply the place of the intelligent reader's own
reflections. Bernal Diaz differs widely from those writers, for he only
states what he knows to be true. The British public, fond above all
others of original productions, will peruse with interest and delight a
work which has so long been the secret fountain from which all other
accounts of the conquest, with the exception of those which are least
faithful, have taken life.

In respect of its originality, it may vie with any work of modern times,
not excepting 'Don Quixote.' The author seems to have been born to show
forth truth in all its beauty, and he raises it to a divinity in his
mind. Can anything be more expressive of an honest conscience than what
he says in his own preface: "You have only to read my history, and you
see it is true."

The reader may form a general idea of this work from the following
critique, which Dr. Robertson, the historian, passes upon it: "Bernal
Diaz's account bears all the marks of authenticity, and is accompanied
with such pleasant naivete, with such interesting details, with such
amusing vanity, and yet so pardonable in an old soldier, who had been,
as he boasts, in a hundred and nineteen battles, as renders his book one
of the most singular that is to be found in any language."

One circumstance, and that very justly, he is most anxious to impress on
your mind, namely, that all the merit of the conquest is not due to
Cortes alone; for which reason he generally uses the expression "Cortes
and all of us."

This is an allowable feeling in our old soldier, and it must be
remembered that the greater part of the men who joined Cortes were of
good families, who, as usual on such expeditions, equipped themselves at
their own expense, and went out as adventurers of their own free choice.

With respect to our author's style of writing, it is chiefly
characterized by plainness and simplicity, and yet there are numerous
passages which are written with great force and el