Now even “the lawyer’s privilege” does not extend to sifting evidence which he has never heard; and if Mr. Prescott was “incapable, from a physical infirmity,” of properly scrutinizing his authorities, it was the more necessary that Mr. Wilson, with his own wonderful eyes, should undertake the task.  There is one manuscript which he might be supposed to have had a strong desire to examine.  His book professes to be a vindication of “Las Casas’ denunciations of the popular historians” of the Conquest.  The work of Las Casas, supposed to contain these denunciations, is his History of the Indies.  Mr. Wilson acknowledges that he has never seen this work; it has, he says, “been wholly suppressed”; and he is terribly severe on the censorship and the Inquisition for having been guilty of this suppression.  But the only suppression in the case is, that the book has never been printed.  The original manuscript may be consulted at Madrid.  A copy of the most important parts of it is in Mr. Prescott’s collection.  Mr. Wilson might have seen that copy, had he expressed the wish.  He did not, however, give himself this trouble; and we think he was right.  The truth is, that, of all the Spanish historians of the Conquest of Mexico, Las Casas is the one who has indulged most largely in hyperbole.  Writing, with little personal knowledge, in support of a theory which required him to magnify the ruin accomplished by the Conquistadores, he has exaggerated the population of the Mexican empire, the number and size of its towns, and the evidences of its civilization.  It was on this very account that Navarrete, who examined the work with a view to its publication, came to the decision not to print it.  We have little doubt as to the propriety of that decision; and Mr. Wilson, we think, also did well in sticking to Cass and “suppressing” Las Casas.[B]

[Footnote A:  Author, compositor, and proof-reader were evidently engaged in a “stampede,”—­the (Printer’s) Devil having strict orders to make seizure of the hindmost.  Part of a Spanish poem, borrowed, without acknowledgment, from Prescott, seems to have gone to “pie” on the imposing-stone, and been suffered to remain in that state.]

[Footnote B:  Mr. Wilson would have been less unfortunate, if he could have “suppressed” the work of Mr. Gallatin to which he has the effrontery to refer as an authority for his ridiculous assertion, that the “so-called picture-writing” of the Aztecs was a Spanish invention.  As Mr. Gallatin’s essay is within the reach of any of our readers who may be inclined to consult it, we shall content ourselves with a single remark on the subject.  That learned writer, who had made a real and thorough study of the Mexican civilization, (having obtained from Mr. Prescott the books necessary for the purpose,) was so far from denying that hieroglyphical painting was practised by the Aztecs, or that authentic copies, and even actual specimens of it, have been preserved, that he himself constructed a Mexican chronology which has no other foundation than these same picture-writings.  There is one remark in Mr. Gallatin’s work on which Mr. Wilson would have done wisely to ponder.  It is this:—­“The conquest of Mexico is an important event in the history of man. Mr. Prescott has exhausted the subject.”]