MONUMENTS OF ANCIENT PERU. 11 



in his mortal breast the most poignant and unquiet sensation. 

 The desire of surviving his perishable existence, and of trans- 

 mitting to posterity his heroical achievements, is an idol to 

 which his last sacrifices are offered up. 



This enthusiasm, of equal antiquity with man himself, has 

 constantly led him to have recourse to a thousand expedients, 

 to elude, as it were, the painful limit of his inevitable destiny, 

 and to avenge its attacks. Odoriferous and aromatic sub- 

 ■stances, balsams, cedar, brass, and marble, on the one hand ; 

 on the other, compositions replete with melody, brilliant re- 

 citals., emblems, and fine images, which have an efficacious 

 power to attra6t attention and excite surprize ; — such are the 

 obstacles which the pride of mortals has opposed to the vora^ 

 ciousness of time. Hence have arisen mummies, which are 

 preserved for thousands of years, reckoning from their origi- 

 nal corruptibility ; the mausolea in which they are inclosed ; 

 obelisks; pyramids; statues; and all the monuments in which 

 the chisel and the graver display their magic skill, to perpe- 

 tuate the posthumous memory of the hero and the man of illus- 

 trious birth. To this same principle we are indebted for poe- 

 try, for history, whether traditional or expressed by sym- 

 bols, and for all the sketches and designs in which the pencil 

 manifests its powers. 



These precious trophies of the vanity and grandeur of men 

 and of nations, destined to. immortalize the triumphs of va- 

 lour, of virtue, and, occasionally, of fanaticism, form, with- 

 out doubt, an objedl worthy the consideration and study of the 

 man of letters. But for them, what information could we 

 have obtained relative to those obscure ages which gave birth 

 to monarchies, arts, and sciences, and in which modes and 



c 2 customs 



