he has prefixed to it a title-page, the grammar of which is questionable and the punctuation vile, but in which he has contrived to represent his opinions as identical with those of Las Casas, the great historian of the Spanish Conquests in America, although, in truth, this identity of opinion is purely imaginary, being founded on his mere conjectures in regard to the contents of a work of Las Casas, which, as he bitterly complains, has been withheld from the world.  Then, with his two supporters, Las Casas on the one side, and Lewis Casas—­we beg his pardon, we mean Lewis Cass—­on the other, Mr. Wilson comes before the public, making first a bow “preliminary” to “Colonel and Mrs. Powell,” “my dear Uncle,” and “my dear Aunt,” in a Dedication that reminds us of a certain form of invitations which our readers may sometimes have received:  “Miss Smith presents her compliments to Mr. Brown, and I hope you will do me the favor to take tea with me to-morrow evening.”

But we have omitted to make mention of the letters “preliminary” which he has printed with the “advance notices.”  He indulges in frequent sneers at the “weight of authority” to which Mr. Prescott was accustomed to attach some importance in the discussion of a doubtful point.  Nevertheless, in his extreme eagerness to obtain for his own opinions the sanction of an authoritative name, he publishes, as “Mr. Prescott’s estimate of his researches,” a letter which he had received from that gentleman, and, quite incapable of appreciating its quiet irony, evidently supposes that the historian of the Conquest of Mexico was prepared to retire from the field of his triumphs at the first blast of his assailant’s trumpet.  Next comes a letter from a gentleman whom Mr. Wilson calls “Rousseau St. Hilaire, author of ‘The History of Spain,’ &c., and Professor of the Faculty of Letters in the University of Paris.”  This, we suppose, is the same gentleman who is elsewhere mentioned in the book as Rousseau de St. Hilaire, and as Rosseau St. Hilaire.  Now we might take issue with Mr. Wilson as to the existence of his correspondent.  It would be easy to prove that no person bearing the name is connected with the University of Paris.  Adopting the same line of argument by which our author endeavors to convert the old Spanish chronicler, Bernal Diaz, into a myth, we might contend that the Sorbonne—­the college to which M. St. Hilaire is represented as belonging—­has been almost as famous for its efforts to suppress truth and the free utterance of opinion as the Spanish Inquisition itself,—­that it would not hesitate at any little invention or disguise for the furtherance of its objects,—­and hence, that the professor in question is in all probability a “myth,” a mere “Rousseau’s Dream,” or rather, a “Wilson’s Dream of Rousseau.”  But we disdain to have recourse to such evasions.  We admit that there is in the University of Paris a professor “agrege a la faculte des lettres,”