WRITING. 



119 



oilier materials, were signified by tLeir respective 

 figures, differently coloured. The number of each 

 article was expressed either by circles, each of which 

 signified ten, or by a kind of pine-apple, which 

 meant five, painted at the top of the basket, or by 

 the side of each individual article ; and if their 

 quantity was so great as to amount to a burthen, 

 or a load, this was expressed by another mark, 

 which had the same signification. The like must 

 be said of their paper, their cups, pots of honey, 

 cochineal, wood, planks, beams, timber, loaves of 

 salt, hatchets, lumps of copal, refined and unrefined, 

 shells, wool, stones, canes to make darts, eagles, 

 skins of animals ; in short, of every thing which 

 each town had to pay for the maintenance of the 

 state. It would be impossible for me to give a 

 minute account of their civil and religious institu- 

 tions, which form the third, and by far the largest 

 department, in this most extraordinary picture. 

 Every trade, every office, every employment, is 

 differently delineated. The rites attending the 

 several ceremonies of burial, marriage, and baptism 

 (for they certainly had some sort of baptism), are 

 minutely set down. But, above all, it seems that 

 the education of children, from their infancy to 

 manhood, had attracted the greatest attention of 

 their legislature. The quantity of food, the 

 quality of labour, the different pursuits attached 

 to each distinct age, the various punishments 

 decreed for the different faults, are stated with a 

 precision and clearness which is quite astonishing. 

 The age of the child can always be made out from 

 the number of circles placed above its head ; the 

 figure of the mother, and indeed of any woman, by 

 her kneeling posture, and sitting on her legs ; while 

 the figure of the father, the priest, the teacher, and, 

 indeed, of all men, besides the different attributes 

 which designate the employment, is always repre- 

 sented either standing or sitting on a low stool, 

 with his knees to his breast." Spineto here intro- 

 duces, as a specimen, a table, which represents all 

 the following ceremonies of a marriage. " This 

 [the marriage] was generally brought about by an 

 old woman, whom they call Amantesa (that is, a 

 marriage broker), who was to carry the bride on 

 her back to the house of the bridegroom, at the 

 beginning of the night, accompanied by four wo- 

 men bearing torches of pine-tree. When arrived at 

 the house, the bride and the bridegroom were seated 

 near to the fire on a mat, the woman, as usual, sitting 

 on her legs, the man on a stool. There they were 

 tied together by the corner of their garments ; after 

 which they offered to their gods a perfume of copal, 

 two old women and two old men being present as 

 witnesses. This ceremony over, they were allowed 

 to dine upon two different sorts of meat, and some 

 pulse. Thus, not only the dishes to be used were 

 marked, but also the cup out of which they were 

 to drink. The witnesses were allowed to dine 

 after the newly-married couple, which circumstance 

 is expressed by their being seated at the four cor- 

 ners of the mat, which served for a dining-table. 

 The sign which is added to the mouth of these 

 four witnesses signifies that, before they retired, 

 they had the right to give, and, in fact, they gave, 

 to the married folks good counsel how to behave 

 themselves, that they might live in pence and hap- 

 piness. The position of one of the women, holding 

 up her right hand, means that the portly matron is 

 already making use of the privilege allowed to 

 give a little exercise to her tongue; while the 

 folded arms of the remaining witnesses prove that 



they are waiting for their turn. In the punishment 

 of their children, the Mexicans seem to have been 

 ingeniously cruel. Most of the chastisements I find 

 marked down, consist in unmerciful castigations ; in 

 driving into the hands, and arms, and legs, and into 

 the body of the culprit, thorns and prickles. Some- 

 times they singed his head with fire ; at other times 

 they tied him down to a board, and threw him into 

 a bog ; and occasionally they held the head and 

 nose of the unfortunate child upon the smoke of a 

 particular wood, which they called axi. The crimes 

 for which they inflicted punishments so severe and 

 so cruel are the same with those which are con- 

 demned by the laws of the most civilized nations of 

 Europe, and cannot but inspire us with a very fa- 

 vourable, nay, exalted opinion of the moral notions 

 of the Mexicans. They seem even to have gone 

 beyond us for the sake of preserving proper habits 

 of industry and morality among the people ; for 

 they not only punished drunkenness with death, 

 but also idleness ; for if drunkenness, said they, ren- 

 ders a man capable of committing a crime, idleness 

 exposes him to drinking and to bad company. This 

 law, however, lost its power with men and women 

 as soon as they reached the age of seventy: they were 

 then allowed to pass their lives in idleness, and to 

 get drunk, both in public and in private. The 

 reason assigned for this extraordinary regulation is, 

 that, as they could no longer work, and had but a 

 short time to live, the law indulged them with the 

 enjoyment of what seems to have been considered 

 by the Mexicans, as one of the greatest pleasures 

 of life. Such is the short account that I can give 

 of this most singular mode of expressing ideas by 

 pictures, which is, I think, an exemplification of 

 the first mode of writing by hieroglyphics. It is, 

 besides, one of the most interesting monuments by 

 which we can arrive at the knowledge of the his- 

 tory of Mexico ; for it is evident, that from the 

 wisdom of their regulations ; from the quantity of 

 taxes, which, as is recorded in these pictures, were 

 levied upon the different towns and nations ; from 

 the minuteness of the details ; and from the pic- 

 tures themselves, which show some knowledge of 

 perspective and drawing, the Mexicans had made 

 no inconsiderable progress in knowledge, in civili- 

 zation, and in the cultivation of the arts." To 

 this, professor Stuart adds the following observa- 

 tions in his son's (Mr Isaac Stuart) translation of 

 Greppo's Essay on the Hieroglyphic System, &c. 

 (1830). " The whole of the above symbols much 

 more resemble the anaglyphs of the Egyptians than 

 they do the common hieroglyphics, figurative or 

 tiopical. That they are totally diverse from pho- 

 netic hieroglyphics, need not be said. The com- 

 bination of so many symbols, some of which have 

 no resemblance, but a merely conventional or ima- 

 ginary one, is a trait altogether of a nature similar 

 to the predominating quality of the anaglyphs. 

 There is some special interest attached to the sub- 

 ject now before us. In connection with what has 

 been before said, it shows that three of the most 

 distinguished nations of three different continents, 

 namely, the Chinese in Asia, the Egyptians in 

 Africa, and the Mexicans in America, have all hit 

 on the like expedients, to transmit their ideas to 

 ! posterity. In all these facts, too, we may see the 

 : infancy of alphabetic writing, the germ from which 

 this tree sprung, whose leaves are for the healing of 

 the nations." 



We have pointed out in the article Hieroglyphic*, 

 \ the mode in which -the important step was made 



