166 
New Spain, 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 hierogiyphical 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 
