RELIGIOUS EXHIBITIONS. 15.1 
At a little distance knelt a group of fashionable girls under the guar- 
dianship of their mamma, and followed by a female servant — a substitute 
for the old duena. After the sign of the cross and the bow to the altar, 
the two lines of beaux on each side of the edifice, first attracted the at- 
tention of the penitents ; but their prayer-books were immediately opened, 
the forehead, mouth, and breast were again crossed, and they hummed 
a prayer, with an occasional aside to mother or sister, in the midst of 
their devotion. After this mingled occupation of prayer, chatting, cross- 
ing, and criticism had been carried on for ten minutes, they closed their 
books, sank from their knees backward on the floor, and sitting thus on 
the boards, threw aside their mantillas so as to display a pet dimple or a 
pet diamond. Presently, remembering that there were other churches to 
visit, they rose slowly, and lounged off to another chapel to bring up the 
arrears of their aves and paters. 
I have thus sketched both the street- walking and church-praying of 
to-day, but there was one church which I must mention specially. The 
Chapel of " Nueslra Senora de Loreto'^ is situated some distance from the 
centre of fashion in Mexico, and is considered quite a pilgrimage by the 
pedestrians who walk but once a year. I visited it, both in the morning 
and at night. In the early part of the day, the crowd was small ; but 
after sunset it was almost impossible to effect an entrance, notwithstand- 
ing the doors and square in front were guarded by sentinels with fixed 
bayonets. 
The church was transformed into a grove of orange, lemon, and flower- 
ing shrubbery ; and the blaze of a multitude of wax torches was reflected 
from the altar, around which the twelve Apostles were seated at the 
Last Supper, amid a pile of silver and gold plate and jewels, arranged in 
a multitude of odd devices, not only on the table but from the floor to the 
ceiling. In grotesque contrast with all this splendor, there were common 
oranges sprinkled with tin foil, and twopenny glass decanters filled with 
dyed waters. 
As I entered from the front door of this edifice, the first thing that 
attracted my notice was a side altar converted into an arbor, in the centre 
of which was a well, with Christ and the woman of "Samaria beside it. 
The lady had been fitted out by a most fashionable mantuamaker, in a 
costume of blue satin picked out with pink, and while she leaned grace- 
fully on a silver pitcher, resting on the edge of the well, our Saviour 
stood opposite in a mantle of purple velvet, embroidered with gold, and 
covered with a Guyaquil sombrero I 
A short distance from this, in the place of another side altar, next to 
the chief one, was the representation of the entombment of our Lord. 
The body, swathed in linen, was laid in a glass coffin. " Mary the Mo- 
ther," dressed in a full suit of black velvet, with a fine cambric hand- 
kerchief in hand, stood among the shrubbery at its foot. In the foreground, 
two little urchins of waxen angelhood, also dressed in black velvet, 
(with black wings and skirts looped up in front, so as to display their 
