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New Spam, as well as in Quito and Peru, we find 

 Indians, who know how to paint and carve ; they 

 succeed in servilely copying whatever they be- 

 hold, and they have learnt, since the arrival of the 

 Europeans, to give correctness to their outlines ; 

 but nothing indicates their being penetrated with 

 that feeling of the beautiful, without which paint- 

 ing and sculpture cannot rise above the rank of 

 mechanical arts. In this, and in many other re- 

 spects, the inhabitants of the New World resem- 

 ble the whole of the tribes of the East of Asia. 



We may conceive also how the frequent use 

 of mixed hieroglyphical paintings must contri- 

 bute to spoil the taste of a nation, thus famili- 

 arized to the aspect of the most hideous figures, 

 and of forms the most remote from correctness 

 of proportion. To indicate a king, who, in 

 such a year, conquered a neighbouring nation, 

 the Egyptian, in the perfection of his writing, 

 ranged in the same line a small number of 

 isolated hieroglyphics, which expressed the 

 whole series of the ideas he wished to represent; 

 and these characters consisted for the most part 

 of the figures of inanimate objects : the Mexican, 

 on the contrary, to express the same thing, was 

 obliged to paint a group of two persons, a king, 

 armed, overthrowing a warrior wearing the arms 

 of the conquered city. But in order to abridge 

 the labour of these historical paintings, they 

 began soon to paint only what was absolutely 



