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SPECULATIONS ON ANTIQUITY. 



an empire, and not waged exterminating war against naked but 

 wealthy savages. It was, in fact, a species of self laudation ; and 

 it has, therefore, not been without at least a slight degree of 

 incredulity that we read the glowing early accounts of the palaces, 

 the state and the power of the Mexican emperors. The graphic 

 works of Mr. Stephens on Yucatan and Central America, seem, 

 however, to open new authorities upon this vast problem of civili- 

 zation. Architecture never lies. It is one of those massive 

 records which require too much labor in order to record a false- 

 hood. The men who could build the edifices of Uxmal, Palenque, 

 Copan and Chichen-Itza, were far removed from the aboriginal 

 condition of Nomadic tribes. Taste and luxury had been long 

 grafted on the mere wants of the natives. They had learned not 

 only to build for protection against weather, but for permanent 

 homes whose internal arrangements should afford them comfort, 

 and whose external appearance should gratify the public taste. 

 Order, symmetry, elegance, beauty of ornament, gracefulness of 

 symbolic imagery, had all combined to exhibit the external mani- 

 festations which are always seen among people who are not only 

 anxious to gratify others as well as themselves, but to vie with 

 each other in the exhibition of individual tastes. Here, however, 

 as in Egypt, the architectural remains are chiefly of temples, 

 tombs and palaces. The worship of God, — the safety of the body 

 after death, — and the permanent idea of loyal obedience to autho- 

 rity, — are symbolized by the temple, — tomb, — and the rock-built 

 palace. The masses, who felt they had no constant abiding place 

 on earth, did not in all probability, build for themselves those 

 substantial and beautifully embellished homes, under whose influ- 

 ence modern civilization has so far exceeded the barren humanism 

 of the valley of the Nile. It was useless, they deemed, to enshrine 

 in marble whilst living, the miserable spirit that, after death, might 

 crawl in a crocodile or burrow in a hog. Christianity, alone, has 

 made the Dwelling paramount to the Tomb and the Palace. 



We cannot leave the early history of Spanish occupation without 

 naturally casting our eyes over the empire which it was the destiny 

 of Cortez to conquer. Of its geographical boundaries we know 

 but little. The dominions of the original Aztecs covered but a 

 small part of the territory comprehended in modern Mexico ; and 

 although they were enlarged during the empire, they did not even 

 then extend beyond the eighteenth degree and the twenty- first on 

 the Atlantic or Gulf, and beyond the fourteenth and nineteenth 

 degree including a narrow slip on the Pacific. 



