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VALUE OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY. 



inhabitants. It is likely that they were offshoots from the same 

 race as the Aztecs, and that they all owed the first germs of their 

 separate civilizations to the Toltecs, who, according to the legends, 

 were the great traditionary ancestors of all the progressive races 

 that succeeded each other in emigrating from the north, and finally 

 nestled in the lovely vale of Anahuac. 



It is in the examination of such a period that we feel sensibly 

 the want of careful contemporary history, and learn to value those 

 narratives which present us the living picture of an age, even 

 though they are sometimes tainted with the intolerance of religious 

 sectarianism and bigotry, or by the merciless rancor of party 

 malice. They give us, at least, certain material facts, which are 

 independent of the spirit or context of the story. Posterity, which 

 is now eager for details, infinitely prefers a sketch like this, warm 

 and breathing with the vitality of the beings in whose presence 

 and from whose persons it is drawn, to the cold mosaics, made up 

 by skilful artizans, from the disjointed chips which they are forced 

 to discover, harmonize, and polish, amid the discordant materials 

 left by a hundred writers. Such labors, when undertaken by 

 patient men, may sometimes reanimate the past and bring back 

 its scenes, systems and people, with wonderful freshness ; yet, 

 after all, they are but mere restorations, and often depend essen- 

 tially on the vivid imagination which supplies the missing frag- 

 ments and fills them, for a moment, with an electrical instead of a 

 natural life. 



After a careful review of nearly all the historians and writers 

 upon the ancient history of Mexico, we have never encountered a 

 satisfactory view of the Aztec empire, except in the history of the 

 conquest, by our countryman Prescott. His chapters upon the 

 Mexican civilization, are the best specimens in our literature, since 

 the days of Gibbon, of that laborious, truthful, antiquarian temper, 

 which should always characterize a historian who ventures upon 

 the difficult task of portraying the distant past. 



In our rapid sketch of the conquest, we have been compelled to 

 present, occasionally, a few descriptive glimpses of the Aztec 

 architecture, manners, customs and institutions, which have 

 already acquainted the reader with some of the leading features 

 of national character. But it will not be improper, in a work 

 like this, to combine in a separate chapter such views of the whole 

 structure of Mexican society, under the original empire, as may 

 not only afford an idea of the advancement of the nation which 



