from market; children, half-starved and naked, and women, whose wiry and uncombed hair gave them the mien of porcupines.

At length, as we gained the top of a little eminence our driver pointed out the "City of Mexico:"'—a long line of turrets, and domes, and spires, lying in the lap of beautiful meadows, and screened, partially, by intervening trees, planted along the numerous avenues leading to the Capital. About two leagues from the city we came to the ancient border of the lake of Tezcoco, now a marshy flat from which the waters have receded. Here we mounted the Calzada, or causeway, raised about six feet above the surrounding waters.

This road is not one of the ancient avenues by which the city was approached, across the lake, during the reign of the Indians, but was constructed at great expense by the old Spanish Government. Although the land to the north of it is covered with saline particles that are perfectly visible as you ride along, yet the southern flats, being watered by the fresher stream from Chalco which flows through several apertures of the dike, are in no manner discolored. The northern marsh was covered with myriads of ducks, and looked as if it had been literally peppered with wild fowl. These birds are murdered in immense quantities with a sort of infernal machine, formed by the union of a great number of gunbarrels, and they furnish the chief food of the poor of Mexico.

Thus, about four o'clock, we passed this unprepossessing approach to the Capital, driving by the body of a man who had just been murdered, lying on the road side, with the blood flowing from his recent wound. Hundreds passed, but no one noticed him. At the gates we were detained only a moment for examination, and we entered the city by the Puerto de San Lazaro. A saint who suffered from impure blood, and presides over sores, may well be the patron of that portal and portion of the suburbs through which we jolted over disjoined pavements, while the water lay green and putrid in the stagnant gutter, festering in the middle of close streets, swarmed with ragged thousands. As I looked at them from our window, they seemed more like a population of witches, freshly dismounted from their broomsticks, than anything else to which, in fancy, I can readily compare them.

But the journey ended as we drove to the hotel Vergara, where a dirty court-yard, filled with sheep, chickens, horses, bath-houses, and a blacksmith's shop, received our jaded crew. I found that a kind friend had already prepared rooms for me, where, after a bath and dinner, I was made as comfortable as possible, by the attentions of a hospitable landlady.

LETTER VIII.

THE CITY OF MEXICO.

You left me retiring to rest at my hotel in Mexico, and soundly did I repose after my last fatiguing ride from the mountains and over the plain to the city. I was roused, however, betimes by the clang of the church bells for early mass. This sound I had not heard since my visit to Italy many years ago, and it brought back to me many pleasant memories, as I lay half awake and half dreaming, during the early hours. When I arose other recollections of Italy were excited. The windows, descending to the ground, of the brick-paved room, thrown open, let in an air worthy of Naples the beautiful! It was the middle of November, but there was a May-mildness in the atmosphere. The sky was of that deep ultra-marine blue peculiar to elevated regions. As I ranged my eye down the street from my balcony, the town was alive with a teeming population; the windows of the houses stood open; fair women strolled homeward from mass; old monks shuffled along in their cowled robes; the butcher urged along his ass with its peripatetic stall hung around with various meats; freshly-leaved flowers and trees stood in the courtyards, of which I caught glimpses through the opened portals; and in the balconies lounged the early risers, enjoying a cigar after their cup of chocolate. It was a lively and beautiful scene, worthy of the pencil of that master painter of cities-Cannaletti, who would have delighted in the remarkable transparency and purity of the atmosphere through which the distant hills, some twenty miles off, seemed but a barrier at the end of the street!

The plan of the city of Mexico is precisely that of a checquer-board with a greater number of squares. Straight streets cross each other at right-angles and at regular intervals. The houses are painted with gay colors-light blue, fawn, and green, interspersed with a pure white, that remains long unstained in the dry atmosphere.

The view of all these from the elevated tower of the cathedral, (to which I soon repaired after my arrival in the capital,) presents a mass of domes, steeples, and flat-roofed dwellings, frequently covered, like hang ing gardens, with flowers and foliage. Beyond the gates, (which you would scarcely think bounded a population of 200,000,) the vast plain stretches out on every side to the mountains, traversed in some places by

long lines of aqueducts sweeping to the city from the hills, and in others, studded with lakes, cultivation, and beautiful groves, until the distant view is closed by the volcanoes, whose snows rest against the blue sky, uncovered, at this season, by a single cloud.

Below is the great square or Plaza; a large paved area, fronted on the north, by the Cathedral; on the east, by the National Palace, (the residence of the President;) to the south of which, again, are the museum, and a stone edifice recently built in tasteful style, for a market. The corner-stone* of this was laid after I arrived in Mexico, and before I left, the building was nearly completed. Until that time the fruits, flowers, vegetables, and most of the necessaries of the table, had been sold on that spot, in shambles and booths built of bamboos and reeds, sheltered from the rain and sun by thatched roofs !

In the southwestern corner of the square is the Parian, an unsightly building (erected, I believe, since the revolution,) which greatly mars the effect of the Plaza. It is a useful establishment, however, as it affords a large revenue to the municipality, and is the great bazaar where every article requisite for the dress of Mexicans, male or female, may be purchased at reasonable prices. On the pavement which runs round it, sit numbers of coachmen whose stand is in the neighborhood, and crowds of women with ready-made shoes. Not the least curious, however, among the multitude, with which this side-walk is generally thronged, are about a dozen "evangelistas," or "letter-writers," whose post is always on the curb-stones of the eastern front of the Parian. A huge jug of ink is placed beside them; a board rests across their knees; a pile of different colored paper (most of which is either cut, valentine fashion, or flourished over and adorned with pen-and-ink ornaments,) is placed on it, and, on a stool before them, sits some disconsolate looking damsel or heart-broken

*A medal was struck in commemoration of this event, the legend on which I give for the sake of those who are curious in inscriptions of "modern" latin. The medal is perfectly plain, and of silver.

PRECLARVS
MILITIE

REIPVBLICE
QVE DUX
ANTON.LOPEZ

DE SANTA-ANNA

MDCCCXLI.

ET LIBERTATIS

ET DECORIS

PATRIE

FVNDAMENTA

POSVIT.

lover, pouring out a passion which the scribe puts into becoming phraseology. It is an important trade; and more money is earned in Mexico by this proxy-making love, than perhaps anywhere else. You can have a "declaration" for one rial; a scolding letter for a medio; and an upbraiding epistle, full of daggers, jealousy, love, and tenderness, (leaving the unfortunate recipient in a very distracted state of mind,) done upon azure paper be-sprinkled with hearts and doves, for the ridiculous price of twenty-five cents!

West of the Parian, and all around the southern and western sides of the Plaza, or those portions of it which are not directly occupied by the Cathedral and National Palace, run the arched PORTALES, similar to the arcades of Bologna. These are filled with gay shops, peddlers, caffés, old clothes, toys, flower-venders, sweetmeats, bookstalls, cutlers, curiosityhunters, antiquities, (veritable and doubtful,) and the usual crowd of loungers and quidnuncs. Here the last revolution, or the probability of a new one, is in continual discussion, by knots of idlers. Above stairs, in some of the dwellings, are gambling-houses, as formerly in the Palais Royal, with which the scene here presented does not, of course, vie in taste or splendor.

Opposite to the southern end of the Parian is the Casa Municipal, or town-hall, in the lower story of which is the Lonja, (the Exchange of the merchants of Mexico,) a noble room, filled with all the gazettes of the Republic, of Europe, and the United States, and adjoined by an apartment in which readers may occasionally amuse themselves with a game of billiards.

Descending from the tower of the Cathedral, let us enter the doors of the sacred edifice.

Its floor is of loose disjointed boards, filled with dirt and filth-the covering of the many dead who lie mouldering beneath. But with this, all meanness ends; and whether we contemplate the dimensions of the edifice, or the millions that have been spent upon its decoration, the mind is lost in wonder. It is impossible for me to describe the whole of this building to you-a book would not suffice for the immense and minute detail with which its walls and altars are embellished.

In order to afford you some idea of the wealth of the church, generallyand passing over plate glass and crystal, silver frames, lamps, carving and gilding enough to make an ordinary metropolitan church blaze with splendor-I will only mention one object in the body of the building: the altar and its accessories.

The Cathedral occupies a space of 500 feet by 420 front. The main altar is not erected against the wall, but near the centre of the edifice, beneath the dome. From this, extending around the choir probably two

hundred feet, there is a rail between four and five feet high, and of proportionable thickness, composed of gold, silver, and a small alloy of brass. This is surmounted with silver statues for candles. In front of the altar is the choir, itself a church, built of dark woods of the rarest antique carving. The altar (placed upon a marble platform, elevating it from the floor of the building, and covered with gold and silver ornaments, candlesticks and crosses,) is of wrought and polished silver; and the whole is surmounted by a small temple, in which rests the figure of the Virgin of Remedios, who enjoys the exclusive right to three petticoats; one embroidered with pearls, another with emeralds, and a third with diamonds, the value of which, I am credibly informed, is not less than three millions of dollars! This, you will recollect, is only one part of one church in Mexico, and that one said not to be the richest!

Around this splendid mine of wealth are half-naked Indians, gaping with surprise, or kneeling to the figure of some favorite saint-the misery of the man a painful contrast with the splendor of the shrine !

Passing from the Cathedral door to the south-eastern portion of the city, you reach the outskirts, crossing, in your way, the canals from the lake. I have rarely seen such miserable suburbs; they are filled with hovels built of sun-dried bricks, often worn with the weather to the shape of holes in the mud, while on their earthen floors crawl, cook, live and multiply, the wretched-looking population of léperos.

This word, I believe, is not pure Spanish, but is derived originally, it is said, from the Castilian lepra, or leper; and although they do not suffer from that loathsome malady, they are quite as disgusting.

Blacken a man in the sun; let his hair grow long and tangled, or become filled with vermin; let him plod about the streets in all kinds of dirt for years, and never know the use of brush, or towel, or water even, except in storms; let him put on a pair of leather breeches at twenty, and wear them until forty, without change or ablution; and, over all, place a torn and blackened hat, and a tattered blanket begrimed with abominations; let him have wild eyes, and shining teeth, and features pinched by famine into sharpness; breasts bared and browned, and (if females) with two or three miniatures of the same species trotting after her, and another certainly strapped to her back: combine all these in your imagination, and you have a recipé for a Mexican lépero.

There, on the canals, around the markets and pulque shops, the Indians and these miserable outcasts hang all day long; feeding on fragments, quarrelling, drinking, stealing and lying drunk about the pavements, with their children crying with hunger around them. At night they slink off to these suburbs and coil themselves up on the damp floors of their lairs, to sleep off the effects of liquor, and to awake to another day of misery