heart, however, melted as he took leave of his children and friends, weeping tenderly over them, while he bade each a last adieu. When they had withdrawn, he ordered the officers of the palace to allow no one to enter it again. Soon after he expired, in the seventy-second year of his age, and the forty-third of his reign. History of the Conquest of Mexico. THE VALLEY AND CITY OF MEXICO. The troops, refreshed by a night's rest, succeeded early on the following day in gaining the crest of the sierra of Ahualco, which stretches like a curtain between the two great mountains on the north and south. Their progress was now comparatively easy, and they marched forward with a buoyant step as they felt they were treading the soil of Montezuma. like a rich setting which Nature had devised for the fairest of her jewels. Such was the beautiful vision which broke on the eyes of the Conquerors. And even now, when so sad a change has come over the scene; when the stately forests have been laid low, and the soil, unsheltered from the fierce radiance of a tropical sun, is in many places abandoned to sterility; when the waters have retired, leaving a broad and ghastly margin white with the incrustation of salts, while the cities and hamlets on their borders have moulded into ruins; even now that desolation broods over the landscape, so indestructible are the lines of beauty which Nature has traced on its features, that no traveller, however cold, can gaze on them with any other emotion than those of astonishment and rapture. What then must have been the emotions of the Spaniards, when, after working their toilsome way into the upper air, the cloudy tabernacle parted before their eyes, and they beheld these fair scenes in all their pristine magnificence and beauty! It was like the spectacle which greeted the eyes of Moses from the summit of Pisgah, and, in the warm glow of their feelings, they cried out, "It is the promised land!" They had not advanced far, when, turning an angle of the sierra, they suddenly came on a view which more than compensated the toils of the preceding day. It was that of the Valley of Mexico, or Tenochtitlan, as more commonly called by the natives; which, with its picturesque assemblage of water, woodland, and cultivated plains, its shining cities and shadowy hills, was spread out like But these feelings of admiration were some gay and gorgeous panorama before soon followed by others of a very different them. In the highly rarefied atmosphere complexion; as they saw in all this the eviof these upper regions, even remote objects dences of a civilization and power far suhave a brilliancy of colouring and a dis- perior to anything they had yet encountered. tinctness of outline which seems to annihi- The more timid, disheartened by the proslate distance. Stretching far away at their pect, shrunk from a contest so unequal, and feet were seen noble forests of oak, syca- demanded, as they had done on some former more, and cedar, and beyond, yellow fields occasions, to be led back again to Vera Cruz. of maize and the towering maguey, inter- Such was not the effect produced on the sanmingled with orchards and blooming gar- guine spirit of the general. His avarice was dens: for flowers, in such demand for their sharpened by the display of the dazzling religious festivals, were even more abun- spoil at his feet; and, if he felt a natural dant in this populous valley than in other anxiety at the formidable odds, his confidence parts of Anahuac. In the centre of the was renewed as he gazed on the lines of his great basin were beheld the lakes, occupy-veterans, whose weather-beaten visages and ing then a much larger portion of the surface than at present; their borders thickly studded with towns and hamlets, and, in the midst,-like some Indian empress with her coronal of pearls, the fair City of Mexico, with her white towers and pyramidal temples, reposing, as it were, on the bosom of the waters, the far-famed "Venice of the Aztecs." High over all rose the royal hill of Chapoltepec, the residence of the Mexican monarchs, crowned with the same grove of gigantic cypresses which at this day fling their broad shadows over the land. In the distance beyond the blue waters of the lake, and nearly screened by intervening foliage, was seen a shining speck, the rival capital of Tezcuco, and, still farther on, the dark belt of porphyry, girdling the Valley around battered armour told of battles won and difficulties surmounted, while his bold barbarians, with appetites whetted by the view of their enemies' country, seemed like eagles on the mountains, ready to pounce upon their prey. By argument, entreaty, and menace, he endeavoured to restore the faltering courage of the soldiers, urging them not to think of retreat, now that they had reached the goal for which they had panted, and the golden gates were opened to receive them. In these efforts he was well seconded by the brave cavaliers, who held honour as dear to them as fortune; until the dullest spirits caught somewhat of the enthusiasm of their leaders, and the general had the satisfaction to see his hesitating columns, with their usual buoyant step, once more on their march down the slopes of the History of the Conquest of Mexico, Book AUTHORSHIP. It is not very easy to see on what this low estimate of literature rested. As a profession it has too little in common with more active ones to afford much ground for running a parallel. The soldier has to do with externals; and his contests and triumphs are over matter in its various forms, whether of man or material nature. The poet deals with the bodiless forms of air, of fancy lighter than air. IIis business is contemplative, the other's is active, and depends for its success on strong moral energy and presence of mind. He must, indeed, have genius of the highest order to effect his own combinations, anticipate the movements of his enemy, and dart with eagle eye on his vulnerable point. But who shall say that this practical genius, if we may so term it, is to rank higher in the scale than the creative power of the poet, the spark from the mind of divinity itself? แ The orator might seem to afford better ground for comparison, since, though his theatre of action is abroad, he may be said to work with much the same tools as the writer. Yet how much of his success depends on qualities other than intellectual! Action," said the father of eloquence, “action, action are the three things most essential to an orator." How much depends on the look, the gesture, the magical tones of voice, modulated to the passions he has stirred; and how much on the contagious sympathies of the audience itself which drown everything like criticism in the overwhelming tide of emotion! If any one would know how much, let him, after patiently standing "till his feet throb, And his head thumps, to feed upon the breath Of patriots bursting with heroic rage," read the same speech in the columns of a morning newspaper, or in the well-concocted report of the orator himself. The productions of the writer are subjected to a fiercer ordeal. He has no excited sympathies of numbers to hurry his readers along over his blunders. He is scanned in the calm silence of the closet. Every flower of fancy seems here to wither under the rude breath of criticism; every link in the chain of argument is subjected to the touch of prying scrutiny, and if there be the least flaw in it it is sure to 66 be detected. There is no tribunal so stern as removed from all the sympathetic impulses the secret tribunal of a man's own closet, far of humanity. Surely there is no form in which intellect can be exhibited to the world so completely stripped of all adventitious But, says the practical man, let us estimate aids as the form of written composition. things by their utility. "You talk of the poems of Homer," said a mathematician, question which involves an answer some"but, after all, what do they prove?" A what too voluminous for the tail of an article. But if the poems of Homer were, as Heeren asserts, the principal bond which held the Grecian states together, and gave them a national feeling, they than all the arithmeticians of Greece-and there were many cunning ones in it-ever prove" more proved. The results of military skill are indeed obvious. The soldier, by a single victory, enlarges the limits of an empire; he may do more, he may achieve the liberties of a nation, or roll back the tide of barbarism ready to overwhelm them. Wellington was placed in such a position and nobly did he do his work, or, rather, he was placed at the apparatus as enabled him to do it. With head of such a gigantic moral and physical his own unassisted strength, of course, he could have done nothing. own solitary resources that the great writer But it is on his has to rely. And yet who shall say that the triumphs of Wellington have been greater than those of Scott, whose works are familiar as household words to every fireside in his have crossed oceans and deserts, and, with own land, from the castle to the cottage; healing on their wings, found their way to the remotest regions; have helped to form the character, until his own mind may be said to be incorporated into those of hundreds of thousands of his fellow-men? Who is there that has not, at some time or other, felt the heaviness of his heart lightened, his pains mitigated, and his bright moments of life made still brighter by the magical touches of his genius? And shall we speak of his victories as less real, less serviceable of the greatest captain of his day? The trito humanity, less truly glorious, than those umphs of the warrior are bounded by the narrow theatre of his own age; but those of greater and greater lustre in ages yet unborn, a Scott or a Shakspeare will be renewed with when the victorious chieftain shall be for minstrel and the page of the chronicler. gotten, or shall live only in the song of the Sir Walter Scott: North Amer. Review, April, 1838, and in his Biog. and Crit. Miscellanies. JULIUS CHARLES HARE, born 1796, graduated at Cambridge, 1819, became Rector of Hurstmonceaux, 1832, Archdeacon of Lewes, 1840, Canon of Chichester, 1851, Chaplain to the Queen, 1853, died 1855. Sermons Preached before the University of Cambridge, 1839; The Victory of Faith, and other Sermons, Camb., 1840, 8vo; Sermons Preached at Hurstmonceaux Church, vol. i., 1841, 8vo, vol. ii., 1849, 8vo; The Mission of the Comforter, and other Sermons, with Notes, 1846, 2 vols. 8vo; The Essays and Tales of John Sterling, with a Memoir of his Life, 1848, 2 vols. 12mo. He also published single Sermons, Charges, Letters, etc., was joint author with his brother, the Rev. Augustus William Hare, of Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, Lond., 1827, 2 vols. 12mo, 2d edit., 1838, 12mo, 3d edit., 1840, 12mo, Series Second, 2d edit., 1848, 12mo, new edit., 1855, 12mo, and was co-translator with Bishop Thirlwall of vols. i. and ii., 8vo, Lond., 1828-32, of Niebuhr's History of Rome, new edit., 1855. See Lond. Gent. Mag., 1855, i. 424 (Obituary). THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT. Walk as children of light. This is the simple and beautiful substance of your Christian duty. This is your bright privilege, which, if you use it according to the grace whereby you have received it, will be a prelude and foretaste of the bliss and glory of heaven. It is to light that all nations and languages have had recourse whenever they wanted a symbol for anything excellent in glory; and if we were to search through the whole of inanimate nature for an emblem of pure unadulterated happiness, where could we find such an emblem except in light? traversing the illimitable regions of space with a speed surpassing that of thought, incapable of injury or stain, and whithersoever it goes, showering beauty and gladness. In order, however, that we may in due time inherit the whole fulness of this radiant beatitude, we must begin by training and fitting ourselves for it. Nothing good bursts forth all at once. The lightning may dart out of a black cloud; but the day sends his bright heralds before him, to prepare the world for his coming. So should we endeavour to render our lives here on earth as it were the dawn of heaven's eternal day: we should endeavour to walk as children of light. Our thoughts and feelings should all be akin to light, and have something of the nature of light in them: and our actions should be like the action of light itself, and like the actions of all those powers and of all those beings which pertain to light, and may be said to form the family of light; while we should carefully abstain and shrink from all such works as pertain to darkness, and are wrought by those who may be called the brood of darkness. Thus the children of light will walk as having the light of knowledge, steadfastly, firmly, right onward to the end that is set before them. When men are walking in the dark, through an unknown and roadless country, they walk insecurely, doubtfully, timidly. For they cannot see where they are treading: they are fearful of stumbling against a stone, or falling into a pit; they cannot even keep on for many steps certain of the course they are taking. But by day we perceive what is under us and about us, we have the end of our journey, or at least the quarter where it lies, full in view, and we are able to make for it by the safest and speediest way. The very same advantage have those who are light in the Lord, the children of spiritual light, over the children of spiritual darkness. They know whither they are going: to heaven. They know how they are to get there: by Ilim who has declared Himself to be the Way; by keeping His words, by walking in His paths, by trusting in His atonement. If you then are children of light, if you know all this, walk according to your knowledge, without stumbling or slipping, without swerving or straying, without loitering or dallying by the way, onward and ever onward beneath the light of the Sun of Righteousness, on the road which leads to heaven. In the next place the children of light are upright, and honest, and straightforward, and open, and frank, in all their dealings. There is nothing like lurking or concealment about them, nothing like dissimulation, nothing like fraud or deceit. These are the ministers and the spawn of darkness. It is darkness that hides its face, lest any should be appalled by so dismal a sight: light is the revealer and manifester of all things. It lifts up its brow on high, that all may be hold it: for it is conscious that it has nothing to dread, that the breath of shame cannot soil it. Whereas the wicked lie in wait, and roam through the dark, and screen themselves therein from the sight of the sun; as though the sun were the only eye wherewith God can behold their doings. It is under the cover of night that the reveller commits his foulest acts of intemperance and debauchery. It is under the cover of night that the thief and the murderer prowls about to bereave his brother of his substance or his life. These children of darkness seek the shades of darkness to hide themselves thereby from the eyes of their fellow-creatures, from the eyes of Heaven, nay, even from their own eyes, from the eye of conscience, which at such a season they find it easier to hoodwink and blind. They, on the other hand, who walk abroad and ply their tasks during the day, are those by whose labour their brethren are benefited and supported; those who make the earth yield her increase, or who convert her produce into food and clothing, or who minister to such wants as spring up in countless varieties beneath the march of civilized society. Nor is this confined to men; the brute animals seem to be under a similar instinct. The beasts of prey lie in their lair during the daytime, and wait for sunset ere they sally out on their destructive wanderings; while the beneficent and household animals, those which are most useful and friendly to man, are like him in a certain sense children of light, and come forth and go to rest with the sun. They who are conscious of no evil wish or purpose do not shun or shrink from the eyes of others; though never forward in courting notice, they bid it welcome when it chooses to visit them. Our Saviour Himself tells us, that the condemnation of the world lies in this, that although light is come into the world, yet men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. Nothing but their having utterly depraved their nature could seduce them into loving what is so contrary and repugnant to it. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, nor cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth_cometh to the light that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. To the same effect He commands His disciples to let their light so shine before men, that they may see their good works, not, however, for any vain, ostentatious, selfish purpose, this would have been directly against the whole spirit of His teaching,but in order that men may be moved thereby to glorify God. For the children of light are also meek and lowly. Even the sun, although he stands up on high, and drives his chariot across the heavens, rather averts observation from himself than attracts it. His joy is to glorify his Maker, to display the beauty, and magnificence, and harmony, and order, of all the works of God. So far, however, as it is possible for him, he withdraws himself from the eyes of mankind; not indeed in darkness, wherein the wicked hide their shame, but in excess of light, wherein God Himself veils His glory. And if we look at the other children of light, that host of white-robed pilgrims that travel across the vault of the nightly sky, the imagination is unable to conceive anything quieter, and calmer, and more unassuming. They are the exquisite and perfect emblems of meek loveliness and humility in high station. It is only the spurious lights of the fire whereby the earth would mimic the light of heaven, that glare and flare and challenge attention for themselves; while, instead of illuminating the darkness beyond their immediate neighbourhood, they merely make it thicker and more palpable; as these lights alone vomit smoke, as these alone ravage and consume. Again: the children of light are diligent, and orderly, and unweariable in the fulfilment of their duties. Here, also, they take a lesson from the sun, who pursues the path that God has marked out for him, and pours daylight on whatever is beneath him from his everlasting, inexhaustible fountains, and causes the wheel of the seasons to turn round, and summer and winter to perform their annual revolutions, and has never been behindhand in his task, and never slackens, nor faints, nor pauses; nor ever will pause, until the same hand which launched him on his way shall again stretch itself forth to arrest his course. All the children of light are careful to follow their Master's example, and to work his works while it is day: for they know that the night of the grave cometh, when no man can work, and that, unless they are working the works of light, when that night overtakes them, darkness must be their portion forever. The children of light are likewise pure. For light is not only the purest of all sensuous things, so pure that nothing can defile it, but whatever else is defiled, is brought to the light, and the light purifies it. And the childien of the light know that, although, whatever darkness may cover them will be no darkness to God, it may and will be darkness to themselves. They know that, although no impurity in which they can bury their souls will be able to hide them from the sight of God, yet it will utterly hide God from their sight. They know that it is only by striving to purify their own hearts even as God is pure, that they can at all fit themselves for the beatific vision which Christ has promised to the pure of heart. Cheerfulness, too, is a never-failing characteristic of those who are truly children of light. For is not light at once the most joyous of all things, and the enlivener and gladdener of all nature, animate and inanimate, the dispeller of sickly cares, the calmer of restless disquietudes? Is it not as a bridegroom that the sun comes forth from his chamber?-and does he not rejoice as a giant to run his course? Does not all nature grow bright the moment he looks upon her, and welcome him with smiles? Do not all the birds greet him with their merriest notes? Do not even the sad tearful clouds deck drive Him from their doors. He calls to themselves out in the glowing hues of the image grow more and more vivid within The Victory of Faith, Sermon Seventh, 1828. Finally, the children of light will also be children of love. Indeed, it is only another name for the same thing. For light is the most immediate outward agent and minister of God's love, the most powerful and rapid diffuser of His blessings through the whole universe of His creation. It blesses the earth, and makes her bring forth herbs and plants. It blesses the herbs and plants, and ANDREW COMBE, M.D., makes them bring forth their grain and their born in Edinburgh, 1797, became a convert fruit. It blesses every living creature, and enables all to support and enjoy their existto phrenology, 1818, Consulting Physician ence. Above all, it blesses man, in his to the King of the Belgians, 1836, died 1847. Observations on Mental Derangegoings out and his comings in, in his body and in his soul, in his senses and in his ments, Edin., 1831, 12mo, Lond., 1841, post imagination, and in his affections: in his 8vo; The Principles of Physiology applied to the Preservation of Health, and to the social intercourse with his brother, and in his solitary communion with his Maker. Improvement of Physical and Mental EduMerely blot out light from the earth, and cation, Edin., 1834, 12mo. 14th edit., 1852, joy will pass away from it; and health will P. 8vo, New York, 1834, 12mo, 1842, 18mo; pass away from it and life will pass away Relation to the Principles of Dietetics, 2d The Physiology of Digestion considered with from it; and it will sink back into a confused turmoiling chaos. In no way can the edit., Edin., 1836, 12mo, 9th edit., by J. Coxe, children of light so well prove that this is 1849, p. 8vo; Management of Infancy, Physiindeed their parentage as by becoming theological and Moral, Edin., 1840, 12mo, 9th instruments of God in shedding His bless-edit., by Sir J. Clark, 1860, 12mo, by John ings around them. Light illumines every thing, the lowly valley as well as the lofty mountain; it fructifies everything, the humblest herb as well as the lordliest tree; and there is nothing hid from its heat. Nor does Christ the Original, of whom light is the image, make any distinction between the high and the low, between the humble and the lordly. He comes to all, unless they of Andrew Combe, by George Combe (his Eminent Scotsmen; Smiles's Brief Biog 1850. EXERCISE. That exercise should always spring from, and be continued under, the influence of an E |