of trade between it and those points, and the Nation employs a writer who extracts order from the chaos of Mexican affairs, but as much can hardly yet be said of most of the other papers of New York.
V.
A decided literary event has been the appearance of the several volumes of H. H. Bancroft's great History of the Pacific States, devoted to Mexico. They cover respectively the periods of the Aboriginal Annals, the Conquest, the Viceroys, the War of Independence, and Modern Times, including the North American Invasion. The style is bad and the philosophy not profound, but as a narrative and mass of material—of which, perhaps, hereafter, an even better use may be made it fills a place that
nothing else Has even attempted. Its bibliography contains an amazing list of books, and a single brief chapter is often followed by several finely printed pages of references to authorities. In the portion relating to the Mexican War it abuses our own country, as it is the fashion for most later writers to do, and warmly stands by the defeated nation. Now this is a fault of the chivalric sort,
but it is time to say a word on the other side. By Bancroft's own showing, the war party, "which comprised practically the whole country," overthrew the Mexican
president Herrera because he inclined to favor peaceable overtures from the United States. Mexico did not look upon herself as a weak object of commiseration or
sympathy. She was accustomed to speak of herself at that time in official bulletins as la primer nacion de America. The army had a very shrewd idea of winning the victory; they "thought themselves invincible; that opinion being not merely the result of prejudice, but of the supposition
