never existed.  The chronicle which bears the name is, according to him, a work of fiction, written by some Spanish De Foe, who had read the common narratives of the conquest of Mexico, but who had no personal knowledge of the scene in which his story is laid.  What first excited Mr. Wilson’s suspicions was the charming simplicity and apparent truthfulness which, in common with all readers of Bernal Diaz, he has found to be the distinguishing characteristics of the narrative.  “A striking feature,” he tells us, “in Spanish literature, is the plausibility with which it has carried a fictitious narrative through its most minute details, completely captivating the uninitiated.  If its supporters were not permitted to write truth, they succeeded in getting up a most excellent imitation.  In Bernal Diaz the alleged individual affairs of private soldiers are so artfully interwoven with the general history as to give the effect of truth to the whole.  There being no fear of contradiction, this practice of inventing familiar details could be indulged in to any extent, while the beauty and simplicity of such a style fixes at once the doubting.”

  “Ah! si Moliere avait connu l’autre!”—­

Oh that Fielding had known Mr. Wilson!  Partridge, a mere unsophisticated booby, thought simplicity the characteristic of Nature, and therefore out of place in Art.  Mr. Wilson, a transcendental Partridge, thinks simplicity the characteristic of Art, and therefore out of place in Nature.  He is more than ordinarily severe on Mr. Prescott for not having detected in Bernal Diaz these “striking marks of the counterfeit instead of the common soldier.”  “We differ,” he says, “decidedly from Mr. Prescott.”  The difference seems to be, that Prescott regarded the appearance of truthfulness in the narrative of Bernal Diaz as prima facie evidence of its truthfulness, while Mr. Wilson regards the same appearance as the most complete evidence of its untruthfulness.

But we have been anxious to discover some more definite and substantial grounds for Mr. Wilson’s hypothesis.  In a couple of closely-printed pages, devoted to the subject, he asks himself, again and again, the questions,—­“Who, then, was Bernal Diaz?”—­“Who, then, wrote the history of Bernal Diaz?” Failing to extract any reply from the singular individual to whom these queries are addressed, he winds up with the solemn and emphatic declaration, “On the evidence hereafter to be presented, we have with much deliberation concluded to denounce Bernal Diaz as a myth.”  For the evidence here promised we have searched with a patience of investigation which, if applied to the problem of perpetual motion or squaring the circle, could not, we humbly think, have been wholly unproductive; and these are the results.  “The author of ‘Bernal Diaz’ says the march to Jalapa was accomplished in one day;—­a proof that he never saw the country....  Cortez makes the ascent the work of three days, and says