sentiments of Dr Campbell are promulgated, we have it put within our power to ascertain in another way, what the world owes to Spaniards and Papists, and with as much exactness as if we had been their cotemporaries, through the researches of Mr Stephens in Central America. Mr Stephens, we presume, is a Christian and a Protestant. He is by no means enthusiastic, however, in the faith he professes, and for ought that appears to the contrary, either in what he says or does, he might as easily pass for an Epicurean philosopher, or a Mahometan fatalist. Day after day this gentleman traversed regions, the inhabitants of which had no hope beyond the grave, and was in familiar intercourse with tribes whose only solace amid their oppressive wrongs and deep servitude could be the truth as it is in Jesus. Yet we are never told that he spoke to a single individual on the things of salvation, nor even distributed a single copy of the Holy Scriptures. Our author in fact, is a light-hearted cosmopole, set on nothing but scenery and incident. Give him copious variety and adventure, enterprise and discovery, ruins and danger, and so far as he is concerned, men may live like beasts here, and become devils when they die. He pretends neither to be a missionary nor a philanthropist. He is just a traveller, and that is all.

For the sake of one so amiable and talented as Mr Stephens, this is to be deeply lamented. Yet is he not on this very account all the more inestimable a witness to what Spanish conquest really was, as displayed on the shores of America, and directed by the priests of Rome. The author of Maritime Discovery' admits that the priests of Rome uniformly accompanied every expedition that was sent forth to explore the new continents. But following the authority of these very priests themselves, he would have us to believe, that no sooner had the Spanish soldier conquered a tribe, than the Spanish missionary converted it. Mr Stephens is not so credulous. On the contrary he tells us, (vol. i. p. 67,) that the accounts furnished by the padres, of the conversions they effected, were absolutely incredible, and the reasons with which he supports this view are very strong. One objection that he states is almost conclusive of itself, viz., that the conversions which the Popish historians boast of, took place before the conquerors had acquired the language of the natives, and in a space of time as short as forty days. That, however, which shows most awfully the real nature of the Spanish conquests, and Papal conversions, is the proclamation, that, according to Mr Stephens, was used by every discoverer on planting the royal standard of Spain upon a new shore, and which was prepared by the most eminent divines of the mother country. In that document, 'the inhabitants are required to acknowledge and obey the church as the superior, and guide of the universe-the holy father, the pope-and his majesty. At the same time it was added, but if you will not com

ply, then with the help of God, I will enter your country by force→ I will carry on war against you with the utmost violence—I will subject you to the yoke of obedience to the church and to the king -and I protest that all the blood shed and calamities which shall follow, are to be imputed to you, and not to his majesty, or me, or the gentlemen who serve under me.' Vol. ii. p. 446.

This is the proclamation that Popish divines prepared-this is the proclamation that Popish friars saw carried into execution; and according to the tenor of this proclamation, even to its minutest letter, was the conquest and conversion of the world which Columbus fetched from the deep, conducted. From this date, the progress of the invader is traced in blood and desolation, and the pages of the historian record nothing of a once smiling region, but havoc, oppression, and servitude, as the triumph of the Romish conspirators. Tribe after tribe is subdued and scattered. Chief is dethroned after chief in endless succession. Palaces without number are reduced to ashes. Temples are levelled with the ground. Even cities that had once been populous and flourishing, the resort of nobles and the scene of mirth, are left without a tower, and without an inhabitant. And loaded with chains, or crouching in terror, the miserable remnant that might still survive could have found no more appropriate language in which to vent their sorrows, than what was once employed by our own ancestors when smitten by the rod of the same oppressor,-Domine rex! Suggillamur,-nec licet nobis clamitare. Jugulamur, nec possumus ejulare.*

6

Principal Robertson, with strange precipitancy, affirms, that not the smallest vestige of any Indian building, public or private, remains either in Mexico or in any province of New Spain.' But Stephens leniently remarks, in opposition to this averment, (vol. ii. p. 452,) that now better information exists. Vast remains have been brought to light, and the discoveries prove incontestibly, that in Yucatan there were so many and such stately buildings, that it was amazing. In our long route we have discovered the remains of fortyfour ancient cities, never before visited by a stranger. And involuntarily we turn to the frightful scenes of which this now desolate region must have been the theatre, the scenes of blood, and agony, and woe, which preceded their desolation, or abandonment.'

It would appear, however, that at least one city has escaped the yoke of bondage which was prepared for it, and as the following remarkable extract will show, it is not impossible, that we may, in due time, become fully acquainted with all the antiquities of Central America, and all the horrors of Papal conversion. The padre told

us more than this, he told us that at four days' distance on the road to Mexico, was a living city, large and populous, occupied by Indians, precisely in the same state as before the discovery of America. He had heard of it many years before. With much labour he climbed to the naked summit of the Sierra, from which at a height of ten or twelve thousand feet, he looked over an immense plain extending to Yucatan, and the gulf of Mexico, and saw at a great distance a large city spread over a great space, and with turrets white and glittering in the sun. The traditionary accounts are that no white man has ever reached this plain,-that the inhabitants speak the Maya language,—are aware that a race of strangers has conquered the whole country round, and murder any white man who attempts to enter their territory. The old padre, in the deep stillness of the dimly-lighted convent, with his long black coat like a robe, and his flashing eye, called up an image of the bold and resolute priests, who accompanied the armies of the conquerors; and the interest he awakened in us was the most thrilling I ever experienced. If he is right, a place is left, where Indians and an Indian city exist as Cortez and Alvarado found them. There are living men who can solve the mystery that hangs over the ruined cities of America. I believe that what the padre told us is correct.

"*

Some writers have been anxious to establish an affinity between the antiquarian remains of Yucatan, and those of Egypt, and on this to found a theory as to the origin of those American cities which might connect them with the reign of the Pharaohs, and the times of Moses. We cannot see, however, any solid ground upon which so comprehensive an hypothesis may be supported, and the objections advanced against it by Mr Stephens are too strong, we suspect, ever to be fairly neutralized. With a self-denial, which not every traveller would have displayed, our author is firmly opposed to the idea of an Egyptian origin in the cities he describes, and maintains, to all appearance invincibly, that they were reared by the progenitors of those very Indians who are now crouching in the most abject vassalage under the yoke of Spain. Who were the builders of these American cities?" he asks at page 445 of volume 2d, and thus answers the question, They are not the works of people who have passed away, and whose history is lost, but of the same races who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or of some not very distant progenitors. Some were probably in ruins, but in general, I believe, they were occupied by the Indians at the time of the Spanish invasion."

One reason assigned for the opinion just quoted we may give, as not only interesting in itself, but almost decisive of the point.

Incidents of Travel in Central America, &c. vol. ii. pp. 195, 196.

"On the walls of this desolate edifice, as on all others," says Stephens, vol. ii. p. 46, “were prints of the Red Hand. Often as I saw this print, it never failed to interest me. It was the stamp of the living hand. It always brought me nearer to the builders of those cities; and at times amid stillness, and desolation, it seemed as if from behind the curtain that concealed them from view was extended the hand of greeting. The Indians said, it was the hand of the master of the building. The mysterious interest, too, that in my eyes always attached to this red hand, has assumed a more definite shape. In Mr Catlin's collection of Indian curiosities, was a tent presented to him by the chief of the Mandrans, which exhibits two prints of the Red Hand. The Red Hand, I am also told, is seen constantly upon the buffalo robes, and skins of wild animals brought in by the hunters on the Rocky Mountains, and is, in fact, a symbol recognised, and in common use by the North American Indians of the present day.”

Whether this red hand were an idolatrous hieroglyphic, or the armorial bearings of the empire, it may not be so easy to decide. But it does go very far to connect the builders of Yucatan with the aboriginal Indians, who to this day inhabit the luxuriant plains of the American continent. Once they were a powerful and a polished race, with their hereditary sovereigns, and glittering capital, however base they now may be; and those very tribes among whom Brainerd laboured, so simple, so timid, so ignorant, were in all likelihood the fragments of a high-minded and valiant nation.

If a case such as this gives not a new or unexpected view of the Papacy, it is at all events an instance of its malignant prowess, that history had not previously recorded. Every thing that is prosperous and strong will be sure of gaining admiration, and because the Papal interest is now ascending, the world has begun anew to 'wonder after the Beast.' Men talk of Romanism in the softest temper they feel no alarm though it becomes more arrogant in its claims, and more insidious in its manœuvres. Dr Campbell admires its missionary schemes most profoundly, and yet would have us to believe that he is a Protestant minister. Let them pause. If the history of the old world is a last year's almanack to them in regard to this grave matter, let them cast their inquisitive and impartial eye over the archives of the new just brought to light, and in the vivid descriptions of Stephens, or the endless daguerreotypes of Catherwood, they must be convinced, that the greatest foe of God and man is the priesthood of the Beast.

ART. V. Sketches of Irish History, Antiquities, Religious Customs, and Manners. By the Author of Three Years in Italy.' With an Introductory Essay, by CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH. Dublin: Robertson.

THE genius of history is generally depicted with her serene eye gazing on the past, and her tranquil pen embodying on her tablet the narrations and the judgments of her unprejudiced and candid brow. The emblem might come nearer to the reality were she represented as a perplexed housewife disentangling a many-coloured skein, ever and anon meeting with a knot that would puzzle a conjuror, which she cuts or lets pass, and mingling colours together which have no affinities, instead of arraying them under their proper shades. In spite of the lofty notions that are entertained of the dig nity of history,' we cannot find the historian whose peculiar tastes, principles, or warp of mind may not be traced, giving a colour and texture to the web he weaves which he probably imagines he is far above giving. The peculiarity of the author brings many an effect out of a cause which never met before they were united on his pages, or passes by and denies many a result as springing from the source which nevertheless formed its origin. At the time when Walter Scott was Scotland's living wizard, from whom she greedily devoured her literary food, and persuaded herself it must be good because it came from him, a curious circumstance occurred. Having dropped for a time the minstrel's harp and the romancer's pencil, he assumed the pen of the historian, and wrote of Buonaparte. From inadvertence as to dates, or misarrangement of his manifold dispatches, he mistook the time of a battle, a victory,-which the battle was has escaped us now, and is nothing to our tale. He imagined it ten months before it really occurred, and on it founded many rational calculations as to its effects on the subsequent measures of his hero, and drew from it many conclusions, which were all wise and to the purpose, had they not been baseless. Luckily for the great artist, his colour-grinder had more of a historian's accuracy than he; and the blunder was rectified at the expense of cancelling a few pages, flinging down a few hypotheses, and quashing a few consequences, which had his date been true, would have now ranged with the rest of his voluminous book partaking of the dignity of history."

The little work at the head of our article keeps truly to its unassuming title of Sketches. The medley of disjointed things' of which it is constructed, and the variety of works, antiquarian and others, which must have been searched before these varied gleanings were laid side by side, if not subject by subject, on paper, leads us to regret that more had not been made of it. The cupidity and ra