i 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



as baleful and as despotic as it ever did in Old Spain, and held its last 

 auto-da-fe and burned its last conspicuous victim General Jose Mo- 

 relos in the Plaza of the city of Mexico, as late as November, 1815 ! 



In 1810, Mexico, under the lead of Hidalgo whom the modern 

 Mexicans regard as a second Washington revolted against its Span- 

 ish rulers, and, after many and varying vicissitudes, finally attained its 

 complete independence, and proclaimed itself, in 1822, first an empire, 

 and two years later, or in 1824, a republic. From this time until the 

 defeat of Maximilian and his party in 1867, the history of Mexico 

 is little other than a chronicle of successive revolutions, internecine 

 strife, and foreign wars. In the National Palace, in the city of Mexico, 

 is a very long, narrow room, termed the " Hall of Embassadors," from 

 the circumstance that the President of the Republic here formally re- 

 ceives the representatives of foreign nationalities. Upon the walls of 

 this room, and constituting, apart from several elaborate glass chan- 

 deliers, almost its only decoration, is a series of fairly painted, full- 

 length portraits of individual Mexicans who, since the achievement 

 of independence of Spain, had been so conspicuously connected with 

 the state, or had rendered it such service, as to entitle them, in the 

 opinion of posterity, to commemoration in this sort of national " Val- 

 halla." To the visitor, entering upon an inspection of these interest- 

 ing pictures, the accompanying guide, politely desirous of imparting 

 all desirable information concerning them, talks somewhat after this 

 manner : 



" This is a portrait of the Emperor Iturbide, commander-in-chief of 

 the army that defeated and expelled the last Spanish viceroy ; elected 

 emperor in 1822 ; resigned the crown in 1823 ; was proscribed, arrested, 

 and shot in 1824. The next is a portrait of one of the most distin- 

 guished of the soldiers of Mexico, General Mariano Arista" (the gen- 

 eral who commanded the Mexican troops at the battles of Palo Alto 

 and Resaca de la Palma), " elected President of the Republic in 1851, 

 was deposed and banished in 1853, and died in exile in 1855. His 

 remains were brought home at the public expense, and a special de- 

 cree commemorative of his services was declared by Congress. The 

 next is General So-and-so, who also, after rendering most distinguished 

 services, was shot" ; and so on, until it seems as if there was not one 

 of their conspicuous men whom the Mexicans of to-day unite in 

 honoring for his patriotism and good service, but who experienced 

 a full measure of the ingratitude of his country in the form of exile 

 or public execution. In the same gallery is also a good full-length 

 portrait of Washington, but, very appropriately, it is far removed 

 from all the other pictures, and occupies a place by itself at the ex- 

 treme end of the apartment.* 



* Since the establishment of her independence in 1821, Mexico, down to the year 1884 

 a period of sixty-three years has had fifty-five presidents, two emperors, and one re- 

 gency, and, with some three or four exceptions, there was a violent change of the gov- 



