167 



indispensable to recognize the objects. Why 

 give arms to a figure represented in an attitude 

 in which no use is made of them ? Moreover, 

 the principal forms, those by which a divinity, a 

 temple, a sacrifice, were represented, must have 

 been early fixed. It would have become ex- 

 tremely difficult to comprehend these paintings, 

 if every artist could have capriciously varied the 

 representation of objects, which it was so often 

 necessary to portray. Hence it follows, that the 

 civilization of the Mexicans ' might have been 

 considerably advanced, without their being 

 tempted to abandon the incorrect forms, to which 

 they had been habituated for ages. A warlike 

 nation, living on mountains, robust, but ex- 

 tremely ill-favoured according to the European 

 principles of beauty, degraded by despotism, 

 accustomed to the ceremonies of a sanguinary 

 worship, is but little disposed to raise itself to 

 the cultivation- of the fine arts; the habit of 

 painting instead of writing, the daily view of so 

 many hideous and disproportioned figures, the 

 obligation of preserving the same forms without 

 change, these various circumstances must have 

 contributed to perpetuate a bad taste among the 

 Mexicans. 



We seek in vain on the elevated plain of 

 central Asia, or farther to the north and the east, 

 for nations who have made use of this hierogly- 

 phical painting, which has been practised in the 



