recording, we might have learnt whether they celebrated the praises of their ancestors, or expressed the simple joys and sorrows of present life. But invaders who, from pious zeal or with barbaric ignorance, destroyed the pictorial symbols of the Aztecs were not likely to be curious about oral traditions; and we must be content with knowing that the government of the islanders was patriarchal, their employments fishing and agriculture, their creed unknown, and their manners gentle and winning. They are,' says Columbus, a loving, uncovetous 'people; so docile in all things that I believe in all the world there is not a better, or a better country; they love their 'neighbours as themselves, and they have the sweetest and 'gentlest way of talking in the world, and always with a smile.'

Between this primeval culture and the highly artificial life of both Mexico and Peru were many gradations of barbarism or refinement. In Guatemala, for example, we find tokens of an advanced and growing civilisation that, left to itself, might in another century have been second to none at the time in Europe. The progress in the arts was probably owing to the fertility of their soil, and its ordinary result, a dense population. Their fine climate and fruitful land produce maize, cotton, and very fine balsam, the return for one measure of seed being three hundred measures of grain. The Guatemalans used money made of the cocoa fruit: and the possession of money is an argument of high civilisation. Indeed, they worshipped idols and occasionally eat human flesh. But the latter usage was doubtless a relic of waning barbarism. They had fairs, which, like those of Asia and Europe, were generally held in proximity to the temples, and a judge, who regulated prices, presided over them. Among their artisans were goldsmiths, painters, and workers in feathers. In educational matters they were a sensible people, worthy of imitation by more civilised races than themselves. For they had schools in their towns, both for boys and girls, and did not permit diversity in religious opinions (if any existed among them) to breed strife, or trouble either the pupils or the teachers.

'The laws of Guatemala,' Mr. Helps remarks, appear to have been framed with considerable care. Though the government of the Guatemalans was a monarchy, they had a recognised power, if the king behaved very tyrannically, of calling together the principal men and judges of the kingdom, and deposing him. Their laws with regard to theft were curious, and in some respects commendable. They made much distinction between great and small thefts; and they graduated their punishments with care, beginning from a pecuniary fine, and continuing, if the culprit showed himself to be a resolute offender, by hanging. Before, however, taking the final

VOL. CIX. NO. CCXXI.

D

step, they proceeded to the thief's relations, and asked them whether they would pay all the penalties for him, which, no doubt, in this latter stage, were very considerable. If they would not do so, if— according to their expressive phrase they had had enough of carrying their relative upon their shoulders, and would make no more satisfaction for him, the man was hanged. This may be thought a clumsy mode of proceeding; but any gradations in punishment, and any thought for the offender, are proofs of nascent civilisation. Barbarism is always clear, uncompromising, cruel, and has not the time or the desire to enter into nice distinctions and limitations.'

Ere we conclude let us attempt to gather up into one view some of the features of the Conquest, from the moment when Columbus first realised his vision to that when the narrative for the present closes over the fall of the Incarian empire. The confidence of Columbus in the existence of a western continent, or rather in the projection of Asia towards the east, and the incredulity which so long resisted his faith, can perhaps be understood only if we call to mind the prejudices of the ancients, both learned and simple, respecting the Western Ocean. To them the Fortunate Islands were the outposts of the habitable globe: beyond these the Atlantic plunged down measureless precipices; nor were rumours wanting that some hapless vessels had been hurried by storms over the brink into a whirlpool below, in comparison with whose thunders the roar of the cataracts of the Nile was like the breath of the south wind in the first warm days of spring. How profound that conviction was may be seen in a passage of Florus, whose usually plain prose acquires something akin to sublimity in speaking of the Atlantic. The Roman soldiers,' he says, when from the sea-bord of Lusi'tania they beheld the sun sink in the waves, and its flames 'quenched in the water, recoiled with terror as if they had 'seen or done a sacrilegious act.' How tenaciously this ancient superstition lingered in medieval Europe may be seen in that canto of the Divine Comedy in which Ulysses relates the manner of his death. He had passed the barriers which Hercules had set up, not to be overstepped by man:' he had sailed five days west of Ceuta, and come in sight of a mountain loftier than any he had beheld in his ten years' wandering, when

'From the new land

A whirlwind sprung; and, at her foremost side,
Did strike the vessel. Thrice it whirled her round
With all the waves; the fourth time lifted up
The poop and sank the prow: so fate decreed:
And over us the booming billow closed.'*

* Cary's Translation: Inferno, canto xxvi., the end.

Of all the enterprises achieved by man and we write thus in an age when the promises of science, before their fulfilment, have, not unnaturally, from their very grandeur, been slowly credited that of Columbus was, we are persuaded, if we take into account its preceding and attending circumstances, the most arduous. He, in fact, staked his own conviction against all the science and all the traditions of his age. On the fingers of one hand he could have told off the number of those who believed in him: his patrons regarded him at best as a lofty dreamer: his agents in the great discovery were men unable to comprehend his grounds of hope, and inspired by their fears with hatred to his person. Yet Columbus was not the only watcher in that age for some momentous change in the realm of knowledge. Mr. Helps has duly recorded the faith and patience of that princely philosopher, Henry of Portugal, who, from the promontory of Sagres, watched for many a year the rising specks of white sail bringing back his captains to tell him of new countries and new men ;' and to whose energy and encouragement it was owing that the real India of the ancients was disclosed to Europe nearly at the same time that the supposed India was discovered.

But the achievement of Columbus, great and unprecedented as it was, revealed the secret only in part. He died under the delusion that with each fresh discovered island, he was nearing the portals of Ophir, and knew not that he was on the verge of a continent that barred him from Asia. Nothing, indeed, in this eventful history is more extraordinary or more interesting than the succession of accidents leading to important consequences. Once the vessel of Columbus anchored off the shore of the authentic continent, and he departed deeming the land but another island in that seemingly endless archipelago. Again, he who from a peak of Darien first gazed on the Pacific, was unaware that north and south of that specular mount' lay empires, less powerful yet more splendid than that of Charles V., and which in a few years would be numbered among the viceroyalties of Spain. To seamen driven out of their course first came the rumours of Mexico: to men intent only on heaping up golden ingots was first indicated the transcendent opulence of Peru. When, indeed, we compare the means available to the Spaniards with the ends attained by them, the mere boats which carried Columbus, the handful of men led by Cortez, the gaunt feverstricken followers of Pizarro, the wild and needy ruffians who pierced the forests and waded through the marshes of the Isthmus, with the numbers, the local advantages, and the civilisation of the Indians, we are tempted to think that Bernal Diaz was in

the right when he spoke of his adventures as in the retrospect almost incredible to himself. Now that I am an old 'man,' wrote the Polybius of the Conquest, I often entertain 'myself with calling to mind the heroical deeds of early days 'till they are fresh as the events of yesterday. I think of the seizure of the Indian monarch, his confinement in irons, and 'the execution of his officers, till all these things seem actually 'passing before me. And as I ponder on our exploits, I feel that it was not of ourselves that we performed them, but that it was the providence of God which guided us. Much food is 6 there here for meditation.'

We trust that we have made it appear that in the volumes which we now reluctantly close there is also much food for 'meditation.' For his history of America the Royal Academy of Spain conferred on Robertson the degree of associate, and the distinction was well earned and rightfully bestowed. But to Mr. Helps the Spanish nation is even more indebted, since, without disguising the cruelties which were committed, or palliating the errors either of the people or of individuals, he has shown that the rulers of Spain at the time of the Discovery and the Conquest were generally wise in discerning and strenuous in commanding the right; and that the calamities and crimes which accompanied it were common to the age rather than peculiar to the conquerors. So too the Spanish adventurers were judged in England of old by men of a kindred spirit. In the age of Elizabeth, and after the reign of Mary, there was little charity in England for the heroes of Spain. Yet Sir Walter Raleigh, who had fought with Spaniards in all waters, from the Straits of Dover to the Gulf of Mexico, left on record the following passage in his History of the World,' appositely cited by Mr. Helps:

'Here I cannot forbear to commend the patient virtue of the Spaniards we seldom or never find that any nation has endured so many misadventures and miseries as the Spaniards have done in their Indian discoveries; yet, persisting in their enterprises with an invincible constancy, they have annexed to their kingdom so many goodly provinces, as bury the remembrance of all dangers past. Tempest and shipwrecks, famine, overthrows, mutinies, heat and cold, pestilence, and all manner of diseases, both old and new, together with extreme poverty, and want of all things needful, have been the enemies wherewith every one of their most noble discoverers, at one time or other, hath encountered. Surely they are worthily rewarded with those treasuries and paradises which they enjoy; and well they deserve to hold them quietly, if they hinder not the like virtue in others, which perhaps will not be found.'

ART. II. — 1. Report of the Select Committee on Assurance Associations.

1853.

2. The Insurance Guide and Handbook. Part I. London: 1857.

3. Assurance and Annuity Tables. By EDWARD SANG. Folio. Edinburgh: 1841.

A

MONG the monetary institutions which in recent times have attained to a remarkable development in this country, few are worthier of attention and examination than the Societies for Life Assurance.* They are, in fact, our bankers for posterity, and as such are quite as important as ordinary banks of deposit perhaps even more so; for we can exercise considerable vigilance over the latter, but the results of the operations of the former must be left to a period when we ourselves shall have passed away. Nor are they of inferior importance in the amounts of money dealt with, for it was computed in 1849 that one hundred and fifty millions were assured in the English offices, and thirty-four millions in the Scottish. In all probability, the sums at present assured in the offices of the United Kingdom amount to, if they do not exceed, two hundred millions sterling! All, therefore, that concerns the early history, the present and future prosperity, and the management, conduct, and fundamental principles of these associations, must be of moment to those who are connected with them by personal relations, and to some of the most essential interests of society. These are the topics which we propose to treat, especially adverting to some points with which the general public, and even most of the persons assured in the various offices, are commonly found to be imperfectly acquainted.

Referring, in the first place, to the earliest history of these establishments, we discover their dawn in the Mercers' Company of London, which as long ago as 1698, settled the sum of 2,8884. per annum as a security for the yearly payment of 307. during the life of any widow whose husband had, during his health, subscribed

*

By a purely arbitrary, and not very defensible, application of the terms, assurance' is now commonly employed to designate security on lives, and insurance' security against fire. The use of the word assurance' in this sense is in truth a Gallicism, for it is thus made to convey the French and not the English meaning of the word; but the usage appears to be now so well established that we have thought it expedient to conform to it in these pages.