ceremonies, they find in the christian religion particular enjoyments. The festivals of the church, the fireworks with which they are accompanied, the processions mingled with dances and whimsical disguises are a most fertile source of amusement for the lower Indians. In these festivals the national character is displayed in all its individuality. Every where the christian rites have a sumed the shades of the country where they have been transplanted. In the Philippine and Mariana islands the natives of the Malay race have incorporated them with the ceremonies which are peculiar to themselves; and in the province of Pasto, on the ridge of the Cordillera of the Andes, I have seen Indians masked, and adorned with small tinkling bells, perform savage dances around the altar, while a monk of St. Francis elevated the host*.

* From this singular description we may discover more plainly the impolicy with which conversions have been hitherto attempted in foreign parts by our missionary societies. Had they sent away instead of the anabaptists, methodists, and presbyterians which they picked up in Sweden, the north of Germany, both parts of this island, and the Lord knows where, an equal number of our more volatile catholic brethren in Ireland, the conversion might already, perhaps, have made a great progress. The people of Otaheite very feelingly exclaimed, "These missionaries give us still plenty of the word of God, but they give us no more hatchets;" but they would have been probably just as well contented with singing, and dancing, and fireworks. This is a much more economical method of keeping these people assembled together than the distribution of

Accustomed to a long slavery, as well under the domination of their own sovereigns as under that of the first conquerors, the natives of Mexico patiently suffer the vexations to which they are frequently exposed from the whites. They oppose to them only a cunning, veiled under the most deceitful appearances of apathy and stupidity. As the Indian can very rarely revenge himself on the Spaniards, he delights in making a common cause with them for the oppression of his own fellow citizens. Harassed for ages, and compelled to a blind obedience, he wishes to tyrannize in his turn. 'The Indian villages are governed by magistrates of the copper-coloured race; and an Indian alcalde exercises his power with so much the

hatchets. The catholics went better to work. They, too, knew the power of this sort of hatchet bribery. "Se debe llevar avalorios, cuentas de vidrio, cuchillos, anzuelos, y otras buxerias, que para los Gentiles son de mucho aprecio." (Gumilla, I. 349); but they knew that this source must soon dry up; and the holy fathers set all their natural gallantry to work to gain over the women, who seem to be equally susceptible in that quarter, whether savage or civilized, as the men they were aware would soon follow them. They said kind things to the women, praised the beauty of their children, took them up in their arms and caressed them. The women are very fond of that, says a father, Quando va à ver a los Indios en sus casas, tome en sus brazos alguno de aquellos parvulos, le accaricie y haga fiestas a su modo: esto apprecian grandemente las Indias. How are we to be astonished then at the very different results of the endeavours of these two classes of missionaries! Trans.

greater severity, because he is sure of being supported by the priest or the Spanish subdelegado. Oppression produces every where the same effects, it every where corrupts the morals *.

As the Indians almost all of them belong to the class of peasantry and low people, it is not so easy to judge of their aptitude for the arts which embellish life. I know no race of men who appear more destitute of imagination. When an Indian attains a certain degree of civilization, he displays a great facility of apprehension, a judicious mind, a natural logic, and a particular disposition to subtilize or seize the finest differences in the comparison of objects. He reasons coolly and orderly, but he never manifests that versatility of imagination, that glow of sentiment, and that creative and animating art which characterize the nations of the south of Europe, and several tribes of African negros t. I deliver this opinion, how

* The present state of the world unfortunately affords too good an illustration of this maxim. The West Indian slave when he becomes a master is the most cruel of all masters; and the life of a negro's cat, or dog, is synonimous there with a life not worth having. The Greeks, who are much employed in collecting the revenue in Turkey, are infinitely more persecuting than the Turks. And the Hindoo has his most grievous calamities to apprehend from his own brethren armed with foreign authority. Every where cunning and cruelty spring from tyranny and oppression. Trans.

+ What must our brethren of the northern part of this island, who have attained no small reputation for a pragmatical

ever, with great reserve. We ought to be infinitely circumspect in pronouncing on the moral or intellectual dispositions of nations from which we are separated by the multiplied obstacles which result from a difference in language and a difference of manners and customs. A philosophical observer finds what has been printed in the centre of Europe on the national character of the French, Italians, and Germans, inaccurate. How, then, should a traveller, after merely landing in an island, or remaining only a short time in a distant country, arrogate to himself the right of deciding on the different faculties of the soul, on the preponderance of reason, wit, or imagination among nations?

The music and dancing of the natives partake of this want of gaiety which characterises them. M. Bonpland and myself observed the same thing in all South America. Their songs are terrific and melancholic. The Indian women show more vivacity than the men ; but they share the usual misfortunes of the servitude to which the sex is condemned among nations where civilization is in its infancy.

and metaphysical disposition, and who are so much disposed to give metaphysical superiority a precedence over all the other human faculties, feel, when they find that, most probably, their future rivals are not to spring up in any of the rival colleges of the south, or even in any of the great German universities, but among the beardless tribes of the Mexican mountains, and the banks of the Orinoco! Trans,

The women take no share in the dancing; but they remain present to offer fermented draughts to the dancers, prepared by their own hands.

The Mexicans have preserved a particular relish for painting, and for the art of carving in wood, or stone. We are astonished at what they are able to execute with a bad knife on the hardest wood. They are particularly fond of painting images and carving statues of saints. They have been servilely imitating, for these three hundred years, the models which the Europeans imported with them at the conquest. This imitation is derived from a religious principle of a very remote origin. In Mexico, as in Hindostan, it was not allowable in the faithful to change the figure of their idols in the smallest degree. Whatever made a part of the Aztec or Hindoo ritual was subjected to immutable laws. For this reason we shall form a very imperfect judgment of the state of the arts and the natural taste of these nations, if we merely consider the monstrous figures under which they represent their divinities. The christian images have preserved in Mexico a part of that stiffness and that harshness of feature which characterize the hieroglyphical pictures of the age of Montezuma. Many Indian children educated in the college of the capital or instructed at the academy of painting founded by the king. have no doubt distinguished themselves; but it is much less by their genius than their application. Without ever leav