Branz Mayers' Mexico [pp. 117-141]

120 Brantz Mayer's Mexico. [July,
cott, how few, comparatively, are those to whom it has
been more than a biography of Cortez; and perhaps, of
the number, fewer still who have not wholly lost sight of
the vices of the man in the dazzling career of the i~trepid
soldier. And, indeed, it is impossible not to be attracted,
and difficult not to admire, and the fascinated senses are
apt to get the mastery, when we attempt to weigh such a
character in the nice scales of a pure morality.
That element of the highest greatness Cortez lacked.
The influences of his early life, and the objects of his
matured ambition, neither generated nor permitted a strict
code of ethics. The age in which he lived was splendid,
rather than good, and its great prizes were won by the
scheming, rather than the scrupulous-by the daring,
rather than the devout. If he had remained in the cloistered halls of Salamanca in honour, instead of being driven from them in disgrace, the natural force of his character would doubtless have won him some distinction, in
the career to which he had been destined; but he fortunately obeyed the instinct that more surely indicated his
appropriate sphere. Reckless, restless, convivial and dissolute, he loathed a studious and quiet life, that would
have trammelled his wild tastes, and he sought the banner
of Consalvo of Cordova, because the camp offered all that
the cloister denied. When his attention was attracted to
the vast field of enterprise and gain opened by Columbus,
in the New ~Vorld, his soul seems to have been filled with
no large designs of chivalric enterprise. No lofty visions
of new empires, added by his sword to the crown of
Spain, or of thronging converts, led by him to the cross
of Christ, fired the ardour of the soldier, or inflamed the
zeal of the Catholic. "I come for gold!" said he to the
Secretary of Ovando, when he reached Hispaniola. "I
come for gold!" and the succeeding fourteen years of his
life, varied only by the expedition to Cuba, the conspiracy
against Velasquez, and amorous intrigues, exciting general condemnation, were passed in the accretion of the
wealth he sought, from the broad lands he cultivated and
the public offices he held. With the subsequent r~sponsibility of command, however, and the consciousness of a
great field of enterprise opening before him, a sudden
change passed upon his character, and the energies,
wasted in unworthy pursuits before, were recalled, for the