tile, and answer, before no inferior tribunal, such charges as might be urged against him. He appeared with the splendour which became one who had unlocked the treasures of the New World; and his own ample fortune, contrasted with the smallness of the sum divided among his comrades, gave birth to a belief that he had not dealt fairly in the partition of the spoil. As his return to Spain put an end to all fears of his ambition, he was received with the favour which such brilliant services merited. He was invested with the order of St. Jago, the highest rank of Spanish knighthood; and the valley of Guaxaca, with an extensive domain, was erected into a marquisate in his behalf. But he could not obtain what he most desired, the supreme direction of affairs in Mexico. He returned thither in 1530 at the head of the military department, and with authority to prosecute new discoveries; but the direction of civil affairs was vested in a board, entitled the Audience of New Spain. Henceforward we may regard Cortez as a disappointed and unhappy man. Thwarted at home by the double authority established, he sought to reap new glory by exploring the Pacific Ocean; and in 1536 he discovered the peninsula of California, and surveyed part of the gulf which separates it from the American continent. But from that country neither profit nor honour, unless as a geographical discoverer, could be gained; and the result of the expedition neither satisfied the expectations of others, nor repaid the adventurers for the hardships which they underwent. In 1540, wearied and disgusted, Cortez returned to Spain, and found his services forgotten, or at least his person slighted. He served as a volunteer in 1541, in Charles V.'s expedition against Algiers, and had a horse killed under him. This was his last military action. After wearying his proud spirit in fruitless attempts to gain attention from Charles or his ministers to his real or supposed grievances, he retired into seclusion, and died at Seville, December 2, 1547, in the sixtythird of his age. year

We have passed rapidly over the shocking cruelties which marked the progress of the Spanish arms. Some portion of the horror, with which we naturally regard the actors in such events, may be neutralized by the consideration, that men's notions in all things, and perhaps most especially in matters of international justice, are greatly dependent on the spirit of the time in which they live; and that it is hardly fair to judge actions, which won the admiration of contemporaries, according to the standard of a subsequent age. But even in that age there were not wanting many to raise an indignant voice against the cruelties practised on an unoffending people; and after

every just allowance has been made, it is not to be doubted that the treatment of the American aborigines forms a foul stain on the history of Spain, and loads all who were concerned in it with an awful responsibility; and we willingly acknowledge it to have been a just retribution, that of the original settlers few reaped prosperity, repose, or wealth, as the harvest of their arms. With their leaders it was eminently otherwise. Scarce one of those who led the conquerors of Peru escaped a violent death in civil strife; while Cortez (with whom no one divides the fame of conquering Mexico) lived to experience the proverbial ingratitude of courts, and died in that forced obscurity which is most galling to an ambitious mind.

The noble inscription, composed by Southey for the birth-place of Cortez's early companion in arms and rival in fame, needs but the change of name to render it equally applicable to Cortez himself.

"Pizarro here was born-a greater name

The list of Glory boasts not. Toil and Pain,
Famine, and hostile Elements, and Hosts
Embattled, failed to check him in his course,
Not to be wearied, not to be deterred,
Not to be overcome. A mighty realm
He overran, and with relentless arm
Slew or enslaved its unoffending sons,

And wealth, and power, and fame were his rewards.
There is another world beyond the grave,
According to their deeds where men are judged.

O reader! if thy daily bread be earned

By daily labour,-yea, however low,
However wretched be thy lot assigned,

Thank thou, with deepest gratitude, the God
Who made thee, that thou art not such as he."

THE materials for this life of Leibnitz are chiefly taken from the éloge of his contemporary Fontenelle.

Godfrey William Leibnitz was born at Leipzic, June 23, 1646. His father was Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of that place he died when his son was only six years old. Leibnitz's education therefore was left to his mother; and the great variety of his studies is traced to his free access to a large collection of books which his father left. He thus became a poet, an orator, an historian, a lawyer, a metaphysician, a mathematician, and a theologian. In some of these capacities he would not have escaped oblivion ; but every accession to such a mass of titles becomes interesting, when it is remembered how conspicuous he became in more than one of them.

At the age of twenty he applied to the University of Leipzic for the degree of doctor of laws. This was refused, on the plea that he was too young; and he then went to Altdorf, where he maintained a public disputation, and was admitted to the degree which he desired, with unusual distinction. From Altdorf he repaired to Nuremberg, where he heard of a secret society of chemists, or, which was then the same thing, of searchers after the philosopher's stone. Desiring to obtain some insight into their pursuits, he procured some books on chemistry, a subject which he had never studied, and picking out the phrases which seemed hardest, he wrote a letter altogether unintelligible to himself, which he addressed to them as his certificate of qualification. He was admitted with great honour, and was even offered the post of secretary, with a salary; and though he continued his intercourse with them for some time, he kept up his character as an adept to the last.