All such trammels he rejects; and,
accordingly, we have to thank him, so far as mere style is concerned,
for an uninterrupted flow of pleasure in the perusal of his book,
adorned as it is with "graces" that are very far indeed "beyond the
reach of Art."
We come now to those important questions which Mr. Wilson was not,
indeed, the first to agitate, but which he has awakened from their
profound slumbers in the bosom of the Hon. Lewis Cass and the pages
of the "North American Review." We are not to be tempted into writing
another "New History of the Conquest of Mexico"; but we shall endeavor
to state with clearness those points on which the world has had the
temerity to differ from the "high authorities" we have named. It has
been, then, commonly asserted, and is, we fear, by the great mass of
our readers still superstitiously believed, that, at the time of the
discovery of this continent, there existed, in certain portions of it,
nations not wholly barbarous, and yet not civilized, according to our
notions of that term,--nations which had regular governments and
systems of polity, many correct notions in regard to morals, and some
acquaintance with Art and with the refinements of life,--but which were
yet, in a great measure, ignorant of the true principles of science,
little skilled in mechanics, and addicted to the practice of idolatrous
rites.
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