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monstrous figures, gave it as a play tbing^to their 
children. From their hands it was rescued^by 
an enlightened lover of antiquities, Cardinal 
Borgia ; but not before attempts had been made 
to burn some pages or folds of the deer skin, 
on which the paintings are delineated. Nothing 
indicates the antiquity of this manuscript, which 
perhaps is but an Azteek copy of an older book. 
The great freshness of the colours might lead us 
to suspect, that the Codex Borgianus, as well as 
that of the Vatican, does not go beyond the four- 
teenth century. 
We cannot fix our eyes on these paintings, 
without feeling a crowd of interesting questions 
pressing on our minds. Did there exist at 
Mexico, in the lifetime of Cortez, hieroglyphic 
paintings made in the time of the Tolteck 
dynasty, and consequently in the seventh cen^ 
tury of our era? Were there other copies at 
that period than those of the fam'ous divine hook, 
called teoamoxtli^ compiled at Tula, in the 
year 660, by the astrologer Huematzin, and in 
which we find the history of Heaven and of 
Earth, a cosmogony, a description of the con- 
stellations, the division of time, the migrations 
of nations, mythology, and moral philosophy ? 
Was this Mexican Parana, the teoamoxtU^ the 
remembrance of which has been preserved so 
many ages in the Azteek traditions, one of those, 
which monkish fanaticism committed to the 
