anticipating the reward of a wide-spread fame; that he was prompt to acknowledge every service, or offer of service, which had been made to him, and communicated to the public not only his information, but the sources from which it had been derived; that, where he rejected the conclusions of other writers, he treated those from whom he differed with the utmost courtesy and candor; and that, when his task was completed, he left it to the free judgment of the world, without soliciting approbation or courting any man’s applause.

This is not the course which Mr. Robert Anderson Wilson has thought fit to take.  An accidental visit to Mexico, for which he appears to consider himself entitled to no slight commendation, led him into some speculations on the origin and civilization of the Aztec race.  Without waiting to inform himself of the ideas entertained on these subjects by other men, he hastened to put forth his own crude notions in a work entitled “Mexico and its Religion,” and twice reprinted by its enterprising publishers, with titles varied to suit what was supposed to be the popular taste.  Still entertaining an aversion to laborious study, (for which, indeed, his previous education, as well as precarious health, appears to have disqualified him,) he announced his purpose to write a History of the Conquest of Mexico “from the American stand-point,” and issued what he himself called “a clap-trap advertisement,” for the purpose of enlisting the sympathies of a class in whom hatred of Romanism preponderates over knowledge and judgment.  He had made some progress in his “History,” when he found that the ideas which he had supposed to be original in his own brain were old and trite.  Being thus precluded from claiming for himself the merits of a discoverer, he has shown an eagerness, every way praiseworthy, to place the laurel on the brow to which he supposes it rightfully belongs.  Accordingly, he presents to the world, as his master and pioneer, that renowned authority on the antiquities of New Spain, the Hon. Lewis Cass, who, it appears, had published an essay on the subject in the “North American Review.”  While his work was passing through the press, Mr. Wilson wrote what he styles a “Chapter Preliminary,” but what we suppose would have been styled by persons who affect the native idiom when writing their own language, a “Preliminary Chapter.”  This “Chapter Preliminary” he printed and circulated, in advance of the publication of his book; and though it contains not a single fact in support of his theory, nor even any clear statement of the theory itself, he was rewarded, as he expected, with puffs preliminary from a portion of the press, prompt to recognize the merit of a gentleman who had something to sell, and consequently something to be advertised.  The “advance notices,”—­so he calls them,—­thus obtained, are made part of his book, and may there be read alike by discerning and undiscerning readers.  With equal ingenuity