35 



o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



she said, " 3 our star will keep in the ascendant for another five years; but after 

 that it will decline and be eclipsed for ever." The downfall of the Roman Em- 

 pire was foretold by many portents and prodigies, of which even the elder Pliny 

 enumerates a long list ; and the testimony of numerous Spanish historians makes 

 it certain that long before the birth of Columbus the ancestors of Montezuma 

 were frightened by an ominous prophecy which presaged the overthrow and 

 total ruin of their nation. Strange men, cunning, strong, and altogether invin- 

 cible, were to come from the East and consume the race of the Aztecs as the 

 hoar-frost of the Cordilleras is consumed by the morning sun. Lord Bacon's 

 bonmot respecting forebodings might be applied to this kind of prophecies, that 

 "a man troubled with misgivings has commonly good reasons to expect things 

 to go amiss " ; but, even in the noontide of prosperity, such omens of a sudden 

 night have now and then appeared. King Eodrigo, a year before the altogether 

 unexpected invasion of the Saracens, had a vision that "prostrated his mind like 

 a sentence of death," and on the battle-field of Xeres, when squadron after 

 squadron of his iron-clad warriors was borne down by the onset of the Moslem 

 fanatics, he turned to the Bishop of Toledo with the words: " Estd venido ! 

 it has come! These horses and these riders I saw approaching in my trance a 

 twelvemonth ago ; they are going to overtake me now." 



The principal literary event in the interest of popular science in Mexico 



is the issue of a " Pocket-Cyclopffldia of Useful Knowledge" (" Enciclopedia 

 Manual de Ciencias utiles," three vols., Puebla, Manzanares & Co., 1881) a 

 publication which seems to enjoy an increasing popularity, though the editor 

 has been unable to deprecate the hostility of the orthodox press. " The eminent 

 publishers have discontinued the sale of transparent French cards," says the 

 " Correo National," " but we should like to know how and where they would 

 draw the line which makes immoralities detestable in colored lithographs, which 

 are endured in the form of black types on the pages of the 'Enciclopedia.' 

 Don Yriarte, the editor of that publication, affects to doubt the fact that King 

 Philip II possessed a duplicate skeleton of St. Laurentius, and plainly in- 

 sinuates that 'at least 1 one of those relics must have been spurious. History 

 proves that the skeletons in question were originally owned by ecclesiastical 

 establishments of the highest respectability, and we need hardly remind our 

 readers that the Bishop of Velez Malaga recognized the miracle of the dualism 

 as a special dispensation of Divine Grace. Don Yriarte's views are therefore 

 utterly untenable, and valuable only as an additional proof of the immoral ten- 

 dency of his writings." "Tn his article on ' Church Government' and the 'Se- 

 questration of Ecclesiastical Domains,' " says the " Espectador," "the editor of 

 the 'Enciclopedia' quotes the speeches of Emilio Castelar and others of his 

 class, while such writers as the Duke of Braganza y Nunez (author of the 'Sa- 

 cred Petticoat of Santa Eulalia') have never been permitted to offer their views. 

 Nay, in a review of the ' History of International Statistics,' Don Yriarte has 

 no hesitation in illustrating the applications of the 'Rule of Three' by certain 

 formulas whose promulgation would be so directly subversive of the chief dogma 

 of the Trinitarian Church that we must decline to sully these pages" (contaminar 

 estas paginal) " by quoting them. We, with thousands, pray that the re-estab- 

 lishment of the Holy Inquisition may put a stop to such outrages on the interests 

 of the national Church unless the 'Enciclopedia' will revoke its atheistical 

 teachings, and become such an organ of science as the great body of intelligent 



Mexicans will admit with confidence into their homes." 



F. 0. 



