indulges in no rhapsodies or soaring elegance with which to obscure his diction, but is exceedingly plain and clear for his time, with a marked effort at conciseness, although the biographies lead him away at times into trivialities. Indeed his works may be said to be a condensation of the bulky and verbose material of many predecessors, and I gladly join with Alegre in recognizing the value of his labors.
Similar in nature to the biographic history of the viceroys in Vetancurt's Trat. Mex., is the Cronologia de los Vireyes, by Diego Panes y Abellan, lieutenant-colonel of infantry, MS., 131 folios, which does not add much information to the part covered by the preceding work, but carries the account a century further, to 1789, and serves in this respect as a useful check on contemporary writers. Another work by the same officer is Extension interesante de la Plaza de Vera Cruz, MS., 261 pages, 4 to, with plans, wherein he dwells on the plan and necessity for extending the barracks, and improving the means for the health and protection of the troops. With this is interpersed a certain amount of historic information.
The only comprehensive historian of New Spain after Vetancurt is the Jesuit father Andrés Cavo, who was commissioned by the city council of Mexico to write the annals of the capital from the conquest down. While complying with this he included also all notable events in the country, based partly on meagre data remitted by the council to Rome, where he lived in exile as a member of the expelled society of Jesuits, and partly on well known standard authorities; but he lacks the far more thorough and reliable facts in different diarios, cédulas, despatches, and similar matter from official sources or from eye-witnesses, so that his narrative is both meagre and unsatisfactory. It is moreover in the form of annals rather than philosophic history, though attractive in its pure simple style, clear judgment, and impartiality. In the latter respect Cavo goes so far as to praise the integrity of Marques de Croix and the talents of Visitador Galvez, who were leading instruments in his expulsion; he abstains, however, from alluding to this episode, and also from entering on church affairs, except when absolutely needful. His account, ending with 1706, was dedicated to the municipality of Mexico, and passed into the hands of Bishop Madrid of Tenagra, after 1794, in which year 'escribimos en Roma esta historia,' as Cavo states, Tres Siglos, i. 131. He was born at Guadalajara in 1739, and joined the society in his nineteenth year to become a missionary among the Indians. At the expulsion he formed a close friendship with Father Parreno, the influential rector of the college of Mexico, and shared with him every comfort and discomfort till death parted them. De Vila Josephi Juliani Parrenni, Havanensis, Rome, 1792, commemorates this intimacy and the virtues of his friend. An intense longing for home had at one time induced both to sever their connection with the society with a view to return to America, but their wishes were not gratified.
The well known Mexican writer Carlos María Bustamante learned in 1799 from a brother, Lorenzo Cavo, of Cavo's history, and obtaining the original MS. from the prelate Madrid, he caused it to be published at Mexico in 1836 in 2 volumes, sm. 4to, with addition of notes and certain not very commendable changes, which extended not only to language as stated, but to interpolations. He moreover replaced the original title of Historia Civil y Politica de Mexico
