Old Series Complete in 63 vols.

true value of the theories which have been propounded as to the origin of civilization and of art in the eastern hemisphere.

Historically as well as geographically, the area is almost unbounded, and has been occupied, in all probability, from the remotest antiquity, by different nations, if not by different races of mankind, in various stages of social, political, and intellectual development. The ancient remains, many of which are in a singularly perfect condition, considering the lapse of so many centuries, are calculated to impress the most stolid beholder with admiration and awe. Unlike the relics of antiquity in the Old World, they have suffered less from the vandalism of man than from the ravages of time. The advancing emigrant and the retreating Indianeach in his turn-have contributed to their preservation; the one from economical, the other from superstitious motives. Their number is so vast, their acter so diverse as to render any attempt distribution so unequal, and their charat a classification-in this place at least -a profitless task. From Guatemala

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to Upper Canada, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the surface is strewn with stupendous ruins of pyramidal temples and tumuli, entrenched camps and fortifications, walled towns and villages, amphitheatres and pictorial grottos, embankments and bridges, towers and obelisks, wells and aqueducts, high roads and causeways, gardens and artificial meadows; the greater part of which were designed, constructed, and maintained by numerous, intelligent, and skilful races of men who have long since disappeared from the several scenes of their labor, bequeathing to posterity no written, nor even a solitary traditional memorial of themselves or of their ancestors. Some portion of their history, nevertheless, may be dimly discerned by the light of analogy. But before speculating on their probable origin, or determining to what particular branch of the human family they belonged, or from whom they derived elementary instruction in the arts and conveniences of life, let us take a glance at their country, as it presented itself to the astonished gaze of the Spaniards at the commencement of the sixteenth century.

In that age, the continent of North America, so far as relates to its territorial divisions, its political circumstances, and the dispersion of its multitudinous families, differed less than might be supposed from its present condition. Then, as now, fixed communities and nomadic tribes divided the soil between them. In their respective modes of existence, the best of the inhabitants exhibited but an imperfect civilization, and the worst of them but a qualified barbarism; the first were emerging from, and the second were sinking into, a state of social decrepitude and moral ruin. Nor is this the only instance of the verification in the New World of the maxim in the Old, that history reproduces itself. As in the nineteenth so in the sixteenth century, one great national confederation eclipsed all the surrounding principalities or kingdoms. The ancient Mexican League, including the several sovereignties of Anahuac, Tezcuco, and Tlacopan, occupied that preeminent position, and exercised that paramount influence, north of the Tropic of Cancer, which has since be

come the indisputable inheritance of the United States. Less intelligent and humane than the Acolhuans and Nahuatlacas, the founders respectively of Tezcuco and Tlacopan, but more warlike and ambitious than either, the Aztecas of Mexico assumed the lead in all military and aggressive enterprises, and were gradually extending their dominion, which already reached from the 14th to the 21st degree of north latitude, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, when they were startled by the sudden apparition of the Spaniards. The story of their tragical conquest, as has been remarked, reads more like a fiction of romance than a chapter in the annals of mankind. But with that story, excepting so far as concerns the progress which the unfor tunate Aztecas had made in civilization and the arts, we have little to do in this place. Their conquerors in penetrating Central America, and reaching the elevated regions of Anahuac were not less astonished by the multitude of stately and populous cities than by the wealth and magnificence of the tropical landscape. Both were a surprise and surpassingly beautiful to the hardy invaders. "When I beheld the delicious scenery around me," exclaims that honest old soldier, Bernal Diaz, "I thought we had been transported by magic to the terrestrial paradise... Some of our men, who had visited both Rome and Constantinople, declared that they had not seen anything comparable in those cities for convenient and regular distribution, or for numbers of people." Works of public utility, some built of brick and some of stone, were visible in every direction, many of which in magnitude as well as in grandeur rivalled the most celebrated structures of antiquity in the Old World. The terraced-pyramid of Cholula, in the sacred province of Puebla, which was crowned with an elaborately decorated teocalli, or "house of God," and which was built, it has been supposed, upon the model of the Temple of Belus, described by Herodotus, covered an area double that of the largest of Egyptian pyramids; but its altitude was greatly disproportioned to the vast extent of its base, being no more than 177 feet, or a third only of that of Cheops. The interior walls of the teocalli were adorned with curiously wrought plates of silver

and gold, profusely studded with gems. A much greater expenditure of wealth and ingenuity was bestowed upon the shrine of the tutelary god, whose statue, larger than life, was graved in the most durable stone, and painted in the most gorgeous colors. There was not a city or populous village within the confines of the Anahuacan territory, or in the provinces to the south of it, which could not boast of a temple more or less conspicuous for its magnitude and sumptuous embellishments. In fact, storied palaces of princes and nobles, each elevated on a series of artificial platforms, with magnificent flights of steps reaching to the summit; long ranges of scarcely inferior terraced buildings, with pillared façades fantastically carved, which were exclusively set apart for the Mexican priesthood; and gigantic lithic monuments, bearing the mystical emblems of Sabean, Phallic, and Ophite worship, met the gaze of the Spanish soldier whithersoever he turned himself. But architecture was not the only art practised by the ancient Mexican. He was equally skilled in metallurgy. Gold, silver, copper, lead, and tin were the five metals that his country produced, or that were known to him; and in manipulating these he was confessedly not inferior to the expertest craftsman in Europe. His tools for hewing the toughest timber, as well as for dressing the hardest rock, were made of copper alloyed with a small proportion of tin. He found in that composite metal an efficient substitute for iron and steel. His sculptured images, cut out of solid blocks of basalt, are marvellous specimens of manual skill. Swords, knives, and other implements, requiring the keenest edge, were made of obsidian, a most difficult and intractable material of volcanic origin, which he split into the desired form with amazing dexterity. Long after the subjugation of his country by the Spaniards, he set little store by that metal the possession of which so many of our modern archæologists persist in making the sole criterion of a civilized condition. His skill and industry as a mechanic may be judged from a remarkable passage in Mr. Taylor's "Anahuac":

"In the ploughed fields, in the neighborhood [of Tezcuco], we made (says that gentleman) repeated trials whether it was possi

ble to stand still in any spot where there was no relic of Old Mexico within our reach; but this we could not do. Everywhere the ground was full of unglazed pottery and obsifigures that were good enough for a mudian, and we even found arrows and clay seum." (P. 147.)

The Aztecas were likewise indefatigable tillers of the ground; and the East and through the East the whole world is indebted to them for the successful cultivation of the maize and cotton plants. Their famous floating parterres, on the great lake of Tezcuco, bore witness to their singular taste and ingenuity as floriculturists and gardeners. Like the Egyptians, they had contrived a pictorial method of recording events, and so of perpetuating amongst themselves, if not for the advantage of alien posterities, the chief particulars of their history. It cannot be said with certainty, but the fact is far from improbable, that they had invented a phonographical as well as a hieroglyphical character. They had even made some advancement in the physical sciences, especially in astronomy; and had a solar year with intercalations more accurately calculated than that of the Greeks and Romans. But neither the greatest progress in the mechanical arts and physical sciences, nor the possession of the most ingenious and equitable code of laws, and its due administration, will compensate for the absence of a humanizing, if not spiritualizing, system of religion. The bloody ritual of the Aztecan priesthood constitutes by far the foulest page in the humiliating register of superstition and fanaticism. The rites of Moloch and Astaroth appear merciful when contrasted with those of Mexitli and Teoyaomiqui, whose abominable altars, from sunrise to sunset, reeked with the fumes of human gore. The victims were usually captives taken on the battle-field. The effects of national depravity, unhappily, are not to be restricted to the limits of the country within which it originates; on the contrary, like circles made by the falling of a stone on a pool of water, they continue to expand with irresistible momentum until the area-be it small or be it large, an island or a continent-is completely overspread. Thus, to this day, the baneful effects of the former cruelty in Mexico are still widely