life of the nineteenth century, the invaders found
the whole people that was to be delivered, bravely
risen to retain the liberty from which it was
proposed that they should have deliverance.
That foreign army even began its career of glory
by sustaining a defeat in battle, and was forced
to raise a siege and send for succour to its home
beyond the sea. The invading despotism being
strong, could in due time pour in more bayonets.
But even then all it could do at immense cost
of life and money, was to take some towns and
hold them as long as bayonets enough were in
the streets. They were unable even to keep
possession of the intervening country, or of
town or country in much of the outlying land,
where the patriot leader still remained the
centre of the never-ending fight for
independence.

Thus it is that a country cursed for centuries
with the rule of one great European despotism,
is being now plagued by another, which other
has borrowed from the next worst of the despotisms
a morsel of its royalty to dress and forward
to the distant land as a mock emperor with a
stage property throne and crown. And the
domestic traitors of that land have been, found
to be, and have at last been treated as, the
ill-conditioned curs they are, by the foreigners to
whom their vain pretensions have proved as
intolerable as they were to their own countrymen.
And the people who are subject to that military
despotism, and from whose country it has been
so fatally borrowed, regret as they may the lives
of their sons sacrificed and the good money that
has been taken from their pockets by their
master to be spent on an ill deed. That master
of theirs, too, says in his heart that he lias been
befooled. But what is done is done, and the
spilt blood must be worked up into rose-colour
paint for the appeasing if not for the contenting
of his army and his people.

It was the French emperor whom the defeated
faction and some speculating traders blinded
with false information and misled into that
invasion of Mexico which has attained a nominal
success represented in the getting from the
house of the Austrian emperor, the loan of a
royal dummy, to be dressed up as an emperor
and sent to Mexico.

This act has excited the attention of the Old
World and the New. Its consequences are
looked forward to with interest. They cannot
be remote, and a little fuller knowledge of the
history of which we have just taken out the
pith, may make it easier to understand them
rightly when they come.

There was a rich and vigorous race in
Mexico when Cortez made his famous raid of
conquest nearly three hundred and fifty years
ago. Their palaces equalled, said Cortez, the
most beautiful in Spain; and their capital, he
said, was " the most beautiful thing in the
world." But though they had skilled workers
in gold and silver, their currency was gold-dust
in quills, silver in the form of a T, and cocoa
for small change. The ancient government was
an absolute monarchy tempered by privileges
of the aristocracy, and with irremovable judges.
The sovereign, who, when admitted as heir-
presumptive, had gone through a ceremonial
which included buffeting by the people as
a test of patience, had, on his accession, to
go through a sharp reminder of the duties
incident to power. He was kept for a year
or two in the temple upon short allowance of
comforts for a very long reckoning of prayers
and sacrifices, and, when he overslept himself,
had guards near him, who pricked his legs and
arms with thorns, bidding him awake, for he
did not enter on his charge to sleep, but that
he might watch over his people. Thus thorns
were associated very early with the crown of
Mexico.

The Spaniards found Mexico a federation of
three kingdoms; namely, that of the Aztecs,
with its capital Tenochtitlan (Mexico); that of
the Acolhuans, whose king lived at Tezcuco;
and the small kingdom of Tlacopan. The name
of Mexico was probably derived from Mexitli,
one of the names of the Aztec god of war, at
the inauguration of whose temple, thirty-three
years before the arrival of Cortez, seventy
thousand victims—prisoners of war, criminals, and
rebels, saved up in various parts of the empire—
were sacrificed. Many traits of humanity
were blended with this cruel superstition of the
desire of the gods for blood, and the great
efficacy of blood in sacrifice. In the story of the
Conquest of Mexico, the Mexicans seem to have
been better Christians than the Spaniards. We
gladly remember the mild answer of Guatemozin
to a suffering companion when their feet were
rubbed with oil and roasted, to extort confessions
of the whereabout of gold. The king's
companion bitterly lamented and complained,
to which Guatemozin only answered: " And am
I taking my pleasure in a bath?" But if the
Spaniards were cruel, what pluck they had!
When gunpowder ran short and sulphur was
wanted to make more, it was suggested that
there must be sulphur in the crater of the
volcano of Popocapetl. Five men were sent to
see. They climbed to the top of the mountain
which for the next three centuries remained
inaccessible to man, as it had been before. They
found at the top in the eternal snow a gulf a
thousand feet deep, at the bottom of which
burnt a bluish flame sending up hot pestilential
vapours; they cast lots which of them should
be let down by a cord to explore that fiery
gulf for the sulphur; the man who drew the
lot went down in a basket, found sulphur
at a depth of four hundred feet, and secured
his supply.

The spirit of religious intolerance, then strong
in Spain, directed dealings with the Mexicans
by their new conquerors. The Inquisition
never was so merciless as then. Not long
since had died the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada,
who, besides burning in effigy many
thousands who escaped his clutch, had caused
the burning alive of nine thousand persons.
Spain was producing an Alva, France was tending