QEOWTH AND DECLINE OP CULTURE. 181 



unstable. The Cliinese do not make now the magnificent 

 cloisonne enamels and the high-class porcelain of their ances- 

 tors ; we do not build churches, or even cast church-bells, as 

 our forefathers did. In Egypt the extraordinary development 

 of masonry, goldsmiths' work, weaving, and other arts which 

 rose to such a pitch of excellence there thousands of years 

 ago, have died out under the influence of foreign civilizations 

 which contented themselves with a lower level of excellence 

 in these things, and there seems to be hardly a characteristic 

 native art of any importance practised there, unless it be the 

 artificial hatching of eggs, and even this is found in China. 

 As Sir Thomas Browne writes in his ' Fragment on Mummies,' 

 " Egypt itself is now become the land of obliviousness and 

 doteth. Her ancient civility is gone, and her glory hath va- 

 nished as a phantasma. Her youthful days are over, and her 

 face hath become wrinkled and tetrick. She poreth not upon 

 the heavens, astronomy is dead unto her, and knowledge 

 maketh other cycles." 



The history of Central America presents a case somewhat 

 like that of Egypt. The not uncommon idea that the deserted 

 cities, Copan, Palenque, and the rest, are the work of an ex- 

 tinct and quite unknown race, does not agree with the pub- 

 lished evidence, which proves that the descendants of the old 

 builders are living there now, speaking the old languages that 

 were spoken before the Spanish Conquest. The ancient cities, 

 with their wonders of masonry and sculpture, are deserted, 

 the special native culture has in great measure disappeared, 

 and the people have been brought to a sort of low European 

 civilization ; but a mass of records, corroborated in other ways, 

 show us the Central Americans before the Conquest, building 

 their great cities and living in them, cultivating, warring, sa- 

 crificing, much like their neighbours of Mexico, with whose 

 civilization their own was intimately allied. An epitome of 

 the fate of the ruined cities may be given in the words which 

 conclude a remarkable native document published in Quiche 

 and French by the Abbe Brasseur, — " Ainsi done e'en est fait 

 de tous ceux du Quiche, qui s'appelle Santa-Cniz." The ruins 

 of the great city of Quiche are still to be seen j Santa Cniz, 



