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4. Who is ignorant that at the very moment when he had decided on war, it was preparing against him, in order to force him, after so many concessions, to abandon whatever yet remained of his power and prerogatives-the last ren nants of the legal government of the country? And now when the king was conquered, he was judged, he was condemned without law, contrary to all laws, for acts which no law had ever foreseen, or qualified as crimes, which the conscience neither of the king nor of the people had ever dreamed of considering as falling under the jurisdiction of men, or of being punishable at their hands.

5. How would every soul have swelled with indignation, had the obscurest citizen been treated in this manner, and been put to death for crimes defined by an ex post facto law, and by pretended judges, yesterday his enemies, to-day his rivals, to-morrow his heirs! And what would not have been attempted against the least of Englishmen, was perpetrated on the King of England, on the head of the English Church as well as the State, on the representative and the symbol of all authority, order, law, justice, of all that in human society borders on the limit, and awakens the idea of the Divine attributes ! GUIZOT.

72. THE AZTEC EMPIRE.

[Some of the horrible abominations prevalent among the Aztecs, at the time of the conquest of Mexico by Cortez, are here graphically described by Prescott.]

THE

HE amount of victims immolated on its accursed altars would stagger the faith of the least scrupulous believer. Scarcely any author pretends to estimate the yearly sacrifice throughout the empire at less than twenty thousand, and some carry the number as high as fifty. On great occasions, as the coronation of a king, or the consecration of a temple, the num ber becomes still more appalling. At the dedication of the great temple Huitzilopotchli, in 1486, the prisoners who, for

some years, had been reserved for the purpose, were drawn from all quarters of the capital. They were ranged in files, forming a procession nearly two miles long. The ceremony consumed several days, and seventy thousand captives are said to have perished at the shrine of this terrible deity.

2. One fact may be considered certain. It was customary to preserve the skulls of the sacrificed in buildings appropri ated to the purpose. The companions of Cortez counted one hundred and thirty-six thousand of these edifices.. . . Indeed, the great object of war with the Aztecs was quite as much to gather victims for their sacrifices as to extend their empire. Hence it was that an enemy was never slain in battle, if there was a chance to take him alive. To this circumstance the Spaniards repeatedly owed their own preservation. When Montezuma was asked why he had suffered the republic of Tlascala to maintain her independence on his borders, he replied, "that she might furnish him with victims for his gods." 3. The Aztecs not only did not advance the condition of their vassals, but, morally speaking, they did much to degrade it. How can a nation where buman sacrifice prevails, and especially when combined with cannibalism, further the work of civilization? How the interests of humanity be consulted, where a man is lowered to the rank of the brutes that perish? The influence of the Aztecs introduced their gloomy superstitions into lands, before it or where it was not established in any great strength. The example of the capital was contagious; and as the latter increased in opulence, the religious celebrations were conducted with still more terrible magnifi cence; in the same manner as the gladiatorial shows of the Romans increased in pomp with the increasing splendor of the capital.

4. Men became familiar with scenes of horror, and the most loathsome abominations; women and children, the whole nation, became familiar with and assisted at them. The heart was hardened; the manners were made ferocious. The feeble light of civilization, transmitted from a milder race, was grow

ing fainter and fainter, as thousands and thousands of miserable victims, through the empire, were yearly fattened in its cages, sacrificed on its altars, dressed and served at its banquets. The whole land was converted into a vast human shamble. The empire of the Aztecs did not fall before its time.

PRESCOTT.

73. THE VALLEY OF MEXICO.

[The annals of history record few feats of greater daring and bravery than those by which a handful of Spaniards, led on by the noble Cortez, subdued an immense empire, and placed the banner of Castile on the loftiest pinnacle, Tenochtitlan.]

THE

THEY had not advanced far, when, turning an angle of the Sierra, they suddenly came upon a view which more than compensated for the toils of the preceding day. It was the Valley of Mexico, or Tenochtitlan, as more commonly called by the natives, which, with its picturesque assembly of water, woodland, and cultivated plains, its shining cities and shadowy hills, was spread out like some gay and gorgeous panorama before them. In the highly rarefied atmosphere of these upper regions, even remote objects have a brilliancy of coloring, and a distinctness of outline, which seems to annihilate distance.

2. Stretching far away at their feet, were seen noble forests of oak, sycamore, and cedar, and far beyond yellow fields of maize and the towering maguey, intermingled with orchards and blooming gardens; for flowers, in such demand for their religious festivals, were even more abundant in this populons valley than in other parts of Anahuac.

3. In the centre of the great basin were beheld the lakes, occupying then a much larger portion of its surface than at present; their borders thickly studded with towns and hamlets; and in the midst, like some Indian empress, with her coronal of pearls, the fair city of Mexico, with her white towers and pyramidal temples, reposing, as it were, on the bosom of the waters, the far-famed Venice of the Aztecs.

4. High over all rose the royal hill of Chapultepec, the resi dence of the Mexican monarchs, crowned with the same grove of gigantic cypresses, which at this day fling their broad shadows over the land. In the distance, beyond the blue waters of the lake, ni rly screened by the intervening foliage, was seen a shining a eck, the rival city of Tezcuco; and still farther on, the dark belt of Porphyry, girdling the valley round like a rich setting, which nature had devised for the fairest of her jewels.

PRESCOTT.

WHAT

74. WHAT IS POETRY?

HAT is poetry? A smile, a tear, a glory, a longing after the things of eternity. It lives in all created existences -in man, and every object that surrounds him. There is poetry in the gentle influences of love and affliction, in the quiet broodings of the soul over the memories of early years, and in the thoughts of glory that chain our spirits to the gates of Paradise.

2. There is poetry, too, in the harmonies of nature. It glitters in the wave, the rainbow, the lightning and the star; its cadence is heard in the thunder and the cataract-its softer tones go sweetly up from the thousand voice-harps of wind, and rivulet, and forest; the cloud and the sky go floating over us to the music of its melodies, and its ministers to heaven from the mountains of the earth and the untrodden shrines of ocean.

3. There is not a moonlight ray that comes down upon stream or hill, not a breeze calling from ts blue air-throne to the birds of the summer valleys, or sonding through midnight rains its low and mournful dirge over the perishing flowers of spring, not a cloud bathing itself like an angelvision in the rosy gushes of autumn twilight, not a rock glowing in the yellow starlight, as if dreaming of the Eden-land, but is full of the beautiful influences of poetry. It is the soul

of being. The earth and heavens are quickened by its spirit; and the heavings of the great deep, in tempest and in calm, are but its secret and mysterious breathings.

G. W. PRENTICE

76. OUR NEIGHBOR.

ET it down gently at the altar rail,

SET

The faithful, agéd dust, with honors meet;
Long have we seen that pious face so pale
Bowed meekly at her Saviour's blessed feet.

2. These many years her heart was hidden where Nor moth, nor rust, nor craft of man could harm; The blue eyes, seldom lifted save in prayer,

Beamed with her wished-for heaven's celestial calm.

3. As innocent as childhood's was the face,

Though sorrow oft had touched that tender heart;
Each trouble came as winged by special grace,
And resignation saved the wound from smart.

4. On bead and crucifix her fingers kept,

Until the last, their fond, accustomed hold; "My Jesus," breathed the lips; the raised eyes slept, The placid brow, the gentle hand, grew cold.

5. The choicely ripening cluster, lingering late
Into October on its shrivelled vine,
Wins mellow juices which in patience wait
Upon those long, long days of deep sunshine.

6. Then set it gently at the altar rail,

The faithful, agéd dust, with honors meet;
How can we hope, if such as she can fail
Before the eternal God's high judgment-seat?

E. A. STARR

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