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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 
