of the human countenance, would very properly
attract a full house in the theatre of
any London Hospital. Would the interest
excited among men of science justify a showman
in engaging Mr. Fergusson or any other
eminent surgeon to go through a course of
deeply interesting operations before the
public generally, attracted to the Hanover
Square Rooms, or Willis's Rooms, by posters
decorated with exaggerated pictures and
tableaux ? We all want to be taught more
and more to honour human nature : we are too
apt to detect what is intellectually small in
the life that surrounds us, and can see and
handle smallness enough without paying
halfcrowns to finger the heads of stunted little
children suffering under arrested development
of the brain and brain-case. An affliction,
because it is curious, ought not the less to
be considered sacred.

To increase the wonder and the curiosity in
this instance a wild romance has been invented,
built upon a hint found in Stephens's
Central America. Mr. Stephens had his fancy
fixed by a queer story—told him by a jolly
padre—of a mysterious city, from which no
man had ever brought tidings, and of which he
yet somehow had learnt that the inhabitants
kept their cocks underground to prevent the
world outside the mountains that surrounded
them, from being attracted inward by their
growing. Mr. Stephens liked to believe the
story, and thought that two determined young
men might reach the mysterious city. The
romancer went to work and invented two
determined young men—so at least we suspect
—Messrs. Huertis " of Baltimore," and
Hammond "of Canada." These fell in
with Velasquez, a man of business, who
was fired by the relation of their enterprise.
Velasquez (whom nobody appears to have
ever seen) finally came back after a series of
adventures—evidently gone through with a
view to tableaux upon posters—reported
Hammond shot, Huertis sacrificed to the sun,
a priest, Vaalpeor, from whom he got the
children, dead " from the unaccustomed toils
and privations of the journey;" a " faithful
Antonio " also in some way disposed of; so
that in fact every actor in the story was
conveniently packed out of the world before the
exhibition opened. Velasquez himself—
having, we suppose, disposed of his interest
in the children—seems to have retired into
the clouds. Our belief is that he never did
himself consist of anything much more
substantial.

No confection can be coarser than the assumed
journal of Velasquez. The writer has
incessantly the exhibition-room before him,
and is assuming candour, and forestalling
objections to his tale among the audience.
What can be more intensely ridiculous than
this picture of the man of business, who has
been bitten with enthusiasm for the discovery
of the mysterious city, sitting on the top of
a mountain some ten thousand feet high,
pencil in hand ; and, while the first view of
the city is obtained, keeping a running comment
in his diary in this fashion : " Antonio
says the Pacific will be visible within an
hour ; more and more of the lower mountains
becoming clear every moment. Fancy
we already see the Pacific, a faint yellow
plain almost as elevated as ourselves. Can
see part of the State of Chiapa pretty
distinctly. . . . Brave Huertis is in ecstasy
with some discovery, but will not part
with the glass for a moment. No doubt it
is the padre's city, for it is in precisely the
direction he indicated. Antonio says he can
see it with his naked eye, although less
distinctly than heretofore. I can only see a
white straight line, like a ledge of limestone
rock, on an elevated plain, at least twenty
leagues distant, in the midst of a vast ampitheatre
of hills, &c. &c. Still, it is—no doubt
—the place the padre saw, and it may be a
great city." Could any mortal on earth
write a genuine diary in that way ? Then
too, how obvious is the last quoted affectation
of indifference and candour to prepare the
mind of the reader for the succeeding burst
of conviction : "All doubt is at an end. We
have all seen it through the glass, as distinctly
as though it were but a few leagues
off, and it is now clear and bright to the
unaided eye. It is unquestionably a richly
monumented city, of vast dimensions, within
lofty parapeted walls, three or four miles
square, inclined inward in the Egyptian
style ; and its interior domes and turrets
have an emphatically oriental aspect." Obvious
again, is this appeal to a weak point in
the old women who are supposed to be especial
patrons of such tales. Touching the
domes, says the romancer, " Christian
churches they cannot be ; for such a city
would have an Archbishop, and be well
known to the civilised world. It must be a
pagan stronghold. ... It may now be opened
to the light of the true faith."

There is not a sound place in the whole
story; but we waste time and space in a minute
discussion of it. Let us turn to some
authentic details.

We have before us a communication from
a gentleman, M. de Waldeck, who has been
at work for fifteen years as an antiquary in
Central America. In the first place, concerning
the truth that lies under the tale
told to Mr. Stephens, M. de Waldeck says
in the short account of " Picturesque and
Archaeological Travels in Yucatan," which he
published in Paris in 1838, " There exists in
the centre of the Cordilleras of Yucatan, a
considerable population, which I suspect to be
the remains of the natives of Tulunqui, and
which holds NO communication either with
the whites, or even with the civilised Indians.
Hitherto, they have not been reduced, nor have
their retreats been penetrated. They are so
well fortified by nature and art, that nobody
would entertain the idea of invasion. Many