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plate : I have drawn some not uninteresting 
- notions from the hieroglyphic paintings pre- 
served in the convent of San Felipe Neri at 
Mexico : and I perused at Rome the manuscript 
commentary^ which P. Fabrega composed on 
the Codex Mexicanus of Veletri : but I greatly 
regret, that I am not sufficiently versed in the 
Mexican language, to read the works written 
by the natives in their own tongue, and in the 
Roman alphabet, immediately after the taking 
of Tenochtitlan. Consequently I have not been 
able to verify the whole of the assertions of 
Siguenza, Boturini, Clavigero, and Gama, on 
the Mexican intercalation, by comparing them 
with the manuscripts of Chimalpain and of Tezo- 
zomoc, whence those authors assure us they 
derived the notions which they have published. 
Whatever be the doubts which remain on several 
points in the minds of the learned, habituated 
to scrutinize every fact, and adopt only what is 
rigorously proved, I am happy to have excited 
attention to a curious monument of Mexican 
sculpture, and to have given some new particu- 
lars respecting a calendar, which neither Robert- 
son nor the illustrious author of the Historv of 
Astronomy appears to have treated with all the 
consideration it deserves. This calendar will 
be rendered still more interesting by the ideas 
we shall furnish relative to the Mexican tradi- 
tion of the four ages^ or four Suns, which exhibit 
