Disregarding, however, all questions of Peruvian archæology, we may accept the judgment passed upon the _Conquest of Peru_ by one of the most eminent of modern investigators, Sir Clements Markham, who, as a young man, knew Prescott well, and to whom the reading of this book proved to be an inspiration in his chosen field. Long after Prescott's death, and speaking with the fuller knowledge of the subject which he had acquired, he declared of the Peru: "It deservedly stands in the first rank as a judicious history of the Conquest."
The _History of the Reign of Philip II._ remains an unfinished work. Its subject, of course, provokes a comparison with the two brilliant histories by Motley,--_The Rise of the Dutch Republic and The History of the United Netherlands_. The interest in this comparison lies in the view which each of the historians has taken of the gloomy Philip. The contrasted temperaments of the two writers are well indicated in a letter which Motley sent to Prescott after the first volume of _Philip II._ had appeared. He wrote:--
"I can vouch for its extraordinary accuracy both of narration and of portrait-painting. You do not look at people or events from my point of view, but I am, therefore, a better witness to your fairness and clearness of delineation and statement. You have by nature the judicial mind which is the _costume de rigueur_ of all historians.... I haven't the least of it--I am always in a passion when I write and so shall be accused, very justly perhaps, of the qualities for which Byron commended Mitford, 'wrath and partiality.'"
The two men, indeed, approached their subject in very different fashion. In Motley, rigidly scientific though he was, there are always a touch of emotion, a love of liberty, a hatred of oppression. He once wrote to his father that it gratified him "to pitch into the Duke of Alva and Philip II. to my heart's content." Prescott, on the other hand, was more detached, partly because he was by nature tolerant and calm; and it may be also because his protracted Spanish studies had given him unconsciously the Spanish point of view. He even came at last to adopt this theory himself, and he wrote of it in a humorous way. Thus to Lady Lyell, he declared:--