LETTER XXII. 
CIARNIVAL. LENT. HOLY WEEK. 
One of the gayest seasons in Mexico is that of the Carnival ; and 
although the amusements are not so numerous or splendid as those of 
Rome and Naples, yet there is more stirring life and more public exhi- 
bition of joy and pleasure than at other periods of the year, among this 
staid and reserved population. 
The theatres are converted into ball-rooms, and decorated with great 
taste ; masters of ceremonies are regularly appointed ; and the boxes are 
filled every night with the heau-monde — brilliant with diamonds — while 
the pit and stage are covered with groups of motley maskers. Within 
the few last years, the fashionables have refrained from participating in 
the ruses of masquerade ; and the floor has thus been abandoned chiefly 
to the French hair-dressers, pastry cooks, and milliners of the ccdle Pla- 
teros, who frisk about with as much gayety as if they were at the grand 
Opera of their beloved Paris. I went once or twice to witness these 
amusements ; but confess that I had quite enough of them, when, on ven- 
turing once to stand up in a quadrille with some unknown fair one, I 
found an unmasked negro (the leader of one of the orchestras in the city,) 
take the place of my vis-a-vis with a white woman ! I plead guilty to a 
prejudice against such exhibitions. 
The Carnival over — Lent is observed with considerable rigor until 
Holy Week. As the ceremonies of that season are not without their 
peculiarities, I will give you some descriptions of them ; and I know not 
how I can do so better than by extracts from my journal of the period. 
JOURNAL. 
\Sth March, Friday. This is the festival of the "Virgin of Dolores. 
It is impossible to trace many of the old customs of the Church, in a 
country where the ritual is often made up of so many odd and fantastic 
notions, except by supposing that the idea of the original founders was, to 
attract the Indians by as many new devices as they could ingraft upou 
theii regular services. 
