[I give this Letter of Cortés entire, _Ultima y sentidisima Carta_, his “Last and most touching Letter,” as it is styled by Vargas Ponçe, who has embraced it in his important collection from the archives of Seville.{ *} It may be called touching, when we consider the tone of it, as compared with the former correspondence of its author, and the gloomy circumstances under which it was written. Yet we are not to take the complaints contained in it of his poverty too literally; since at his death, but three years after, he left immense estates. But these estates were so much embarrassed by his expensive and disastrous expeditions in the South Sea that his income during the rest of his life seems to have been scarcely sufficient to meet his ordinary expenditure. The last days of Cortés, wasted in ineffectual attempts to obtain redress from the court whom he had so signally served, remind us of the similar fate of Columbus. The history of both may teach us that the most brilliant career too often leads only to sorrow and disappointment, as the clouds gather round the sun at his setting.]
{ *} [It has since been printed in the Col. de Doc. inéd. para la Hist, de España, tom. i., affording an opportunity for correcting the almost innumerable errors which disfigure the transcription of Vargas Ponçe and render it scarcely intelligible.--ED.]