LETTER XVI. 
THE MUSEUM AND ITS ANTIQUITIES, CONTINUED. 
Ascending by a broad flight of steps at the eastern end of the court- 
yard, you reach the second story of the University building, in which are 
liie National Museum and the halls appropriated to students. On the 
ground floor, are a rather shabby and neglected chapel and the college- 
hall or recitation- room, the latter of which reminded me of some of the 
fine monastic chambers of the Old World, with their high ceilings, lofty 
windows, dark walls, cai'ved pulpit, and oaken seats, brown with the hues 
of venerable age. 
On the wall at the end of the first flight, as you ascend to the upper 
story, there is a huge picture, which covers the whole back of the build- 
ing. It represents a court ceremony of the time of Charles IV. ; and 
from the ugliness of the faces, and the characteristic mien of all the 
figures, there can be no doubt that it is a faithful representation, both of 
the persons and costume of the period depicted. 
The first room you enter on your right, is a large hall which, like 
everything public I have yet seen in this Republic, is neglected and lum- 
bered. Around the cornice hangs a row of the portraits of the Viceroys, 
in the stiff and formal guise of their several periods. Some are in mili- 
tary costume, some in monkish, some in civil, and some in the out- 
landish frills, furbelows and finery of the last century ; but whether it be 
of wisdom, or of wickedness, nature has invariably stamped a decided 
character on every head. 
In one corner of this apartment stand the remains of a throne, deposited 
among the rubbish as no longer valuable in a Republic. Near it, how- 
ever, and in strange -contrast, is placed the incomplete basso-relievo of a 
trophy of liberty ; and above this, against the wall, in a rude coflSn of 
rough pine boards, hangs a mummy, dug up not long ago on the fields 
of Tlaltelolco north of the city. 
Yet this room is not altogether destitute of interest, if you can induce 
the keeper to open the shutters. The light then falls upon portraits of. 
Ferdinand and Isabella at the end of the hall, which are worthy of the 
pencil of Velasquez. 
Passing to the adjoining sala, we enter the Museum of Mexican Anti- 
