MEXICAN MYTHOLOGY. TEMPLES AND HUMAN SACRIFICE. FROM "CONQUEST OF MEXICO." YTHOLOGY may be regarded as the poetry of religion, or rather as the poetic development of the religious principle in a primitive age. It is the effort of untutored man to explain the mysteries of existence and the secret agencies by which the operations of nature are conducted. Although the growth of similar conditions of society, its character must vary with that of the rude tribes in which it originates, and the ferocious Goth quaffing mead from the skulls of his slaughtered enemies must have a very different mythology from that of the effeminate native of Hispaniola loitering away his hours in idle pastimes under the shadow of his bananas. At a later and more refined period we sometimes find these primitive legends combined into a regular system under the hand of the poet, and the rude outline moulded into forms of ideal beauty which are the objects of adoration in a credulous age and the delight of all succeeding ones. Such were the beautiful inventions of Hesiod and Homer, "who," says the Father of History, "created the theogony of the Greeks" -an assertion not to be taken too literally, since it is hardly possible that any man should create a religious system for his nation. They only filled up the shadowy outlines of tradition with the bright touches of their own imaginations until they had clothed them in beauty which kindled the imaginations of others. The power of the poet, indeed, may be felt in a similar way in a much riper period of society. To say nothing of the Divina Commedia, who is there that rises from the perusal of Paradise Lost without feeling his own conceptions of the angelic hierarchy quickened by those of the inspired artist, and a new and sensible form, as it were, given to images which had before floated dim and undefined before him? The last-mentioned period is succeeded by that of philosophy, which, disclaiming alike the legends of the primitive age and the poetical embellishments of the succeeding one, seeks to shelter itself from the charge of impiety by giving an allegorical interpretation to the popular mythology, and thus to reconcile the latter with the genuine deductions of science. The Mexican religion had emerged from the first of the periods we have been considering, and, although little affected by poetical influences, had received a peculiar complexion from the priests, who had digested as thorough and burdensome a ceremonial as ever existed in any nation. They had, moreover, thrown the veil of allegory over early tradition and invested their deities with attributes savoring much more of the grotesque conceptions of the Eastern nations in the Old World than of the lighter fictions of Greek mythology, in which the features of humanity, however exaggerated, were never wholly of whom some special day or appropriate fes abandoned. In contemplating the religious system of the Aztecs one is struck with its apparent incongruity, as if some portion of it had emanated from a comparatively refined people open to gentle influences, while the rest breathes a spirit of unmitigated ferocity. It naturally suggests the idea of two distinct sources, and authorizes the belief that the Aztecs had inherited from their predecessors a milder faith, on which was afterward engrafted their own mythology. The latter soon became dominant and gave its dark coloring to the creeds of the conquered nations-which the Mexicans, like the ancient Romans, seem willingly to have incorporated into their own-until the funereal superstitions settled over the farthest borders of Anahuac. 66 The Aztecs recognized the existence of a supreme creator and lord of the universe. They addressed him in their prayers as "the god by whom we live," "omnipresent, that knoweth all thoughts and giveth all gifts," without whom man is as nothing," "in"invisible, incorporeal, one god, of perfect perfection and purity," "under whose wings we find repose and a sure defence." These sublime attributes infer no inadequate conception of the true God. But the idea of unity-of a being with whom volition is action, who has no need of inferior ministers to execute his purposes-was too simple or too vast for their understandings; and they sought relief, as usual, in a plurality of deities, who presided over the elements, the changes of the seasons and the various occupations of man. Of these there were thirteen principal deities and more than two hundred inferior, to each tival was consecrated. At the head of all stood the terrible Huitzilopotchli, the Mexican Mars, although it is doing injustice to the heroic war-god, of antiquity to identify him with this sanguinary monster. This was the patron-deity of the nation. His fantastic image was loaded with costly ornaments, his temples were the most stately and august of the public edifices, and his altars reeked with the blood of human hecatombs in every city of the empire: Disastrous indeed must have been the influence of such a superstition on the character of the people. A far more interesting personage in their mythology was Quetzalcoatl, god of the air, a divinity who during his residence on earth instructed the natives in the use of the metals, in agriculture and in the arts of government. He was one of those benefactors of their species, doubtless, who have been deified by the gratitude of posterity. Under him the earth teemed with fruits and flowers without the pains of culture. An ear of Indian corn was as much as a single man could carry. could carry. The cotton as it grew took of its own accord the rich dyes of human art. The air was filled with intoxicating perfumes and the sweet melody of birds. In short, these were the halcyon days which find a place in the mythic systems of so many nations in the old world. It was the Golden Age of Anahuac. From some cause not explained, Quetzalcoatl incurred the wrath of one of the principal gods and was compelled to abandon the country. On his way he stopped at the city of Cholula, where a temple was dedicated to his worship, the massy ruins of which still form one of the most interesting relics of antiquity in Mexico. f When he reached the shores of the Mex- | race; so that one had to make the circuit of ican Gulf, he took leave of his followers, the temple several times before reaching the promising that he and his descendants would summit. In some instances the stairway led revisit them hereafter, and then, entering his directly up the centre of the western face of wizard skiff, made of serpents' skins, em- the building. The top was a broad area, on barked on the great ocean for the fabled land which were erected one or two towers forty of Tlapallan. He was said to have been or fifty feet high, the sanctuaries in which tall in stature, with a white skin, long dark stood the sacred images of the presiding deihair and a flowing beard. The Mexicans ties. Before these towers stood the dreadful looked confidently to the return of the be- stone of sacrifice and two lofty altars, on nevolent deity, and this remarkable tradition, which fires were kept as inextinguishable as deeply cherished in their hearts, prepared the those in the temple of Vesta. There were way for the future success of the Spaniards. said to be six hundred of these altars on smaller buildings within the enclosure of the great temple of Mexico, which, with those on the sacred edifices in other parts of the city, shed a brilliant illumination over its streets through the darkest night. From the construction of their temples, all religious services were public. The long processions of priests, winding round their massive sides, as they rose higher and higher toward the summit, and the dismal rites of sacrifice performed there, were all visible from the remotest corners of the capital, impressing on the spectator's mind a superstitious veneration for the mysteries of his religion and for the dread ministers by whom they were interpreted. We have not space for further details respecting the Mexican divinities, the attributes of many of whom were carefully defined as they descended in regular gradation to the penates, or household gods, whose little images were to be found in the humblest dwelling. The Mexican temples-teocallis, "houses of God," as they were called-were very numerous. There were several hundreds in each of the principal cities, many of them, doubtless, very humble edifices. They were solid masses of earth cased with brick or stone, and in their form somewhat resembled the pyramidal structures of ancient Egypt. The bases of many of them were more than a hundred feet square and they towered to a still greater height. They were distributed into four or five stories, each of smaller dimensions than that below. The ascent was by a flight of steps at an angle of the pyramid, on the outside. This led to a sort of terrace or gallery at the base of the second story, which passed quite round the building to another flight of stairs, commencing also at the same angle as the preceding and directly over it and leading to a similar ter This impression was kept in full force by their numerous festivals. Every month was consecrated to some protecting deity, and every week-nay, almost every day-was set down in their calendar for some appropriate celebration; so that it is difficult to understand how the ordinary business of life could have been compatible with the exactions of religion. Many of their ceremonies were of a light and cheerful complexion, consisting of the national songs and dances, in which both sexes joined. Processions were Processions were made of women and children crowned with garlands and bearing offerings of fruits, the ripened maize or the sweet incense of copal and other odoriferous gums, while the altars of the deity were stained with no blood save that of animals. These were the peaceful rites derived from their Toltec predecessors, on which the fierce Aztecs engrafted a superstition too loathsome to be exhibited in all its nakedness, and one over which I would gladly draw a veil altogether but that it would leave the reader in ignorance of their most striking institution, and one that had the greatest influence in forming the national character. charge of him and instructed him how to perform his new part with becoming grace and dignity. He was arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense and with a profusion of sweet-scented flowers, of which the ancient Mexicans were as fond as their descendants at the present day. When he went abroad, he was attended by a train of the royal pages, and as he halted in the streets to play some favorite melody the crowd prostrated themselves before him and did him homage as the representative of their good deity. In this deity. In this way he led an easy, luxurious life till within a month of his sacrifice. Four beautiful girls bearing the names of the principal goddesses were then selected to share his honors, and with them he continued to live in idle dalliance, feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the honors of a divinity. At length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived. The term of his short-lived glories was at an end. He was stripped of his gaudy apparel and bade adieu to the fair partners of his revelries. One of the royal barges transported him across the lake to a temple which rose on its margin, about a league from the city. Hither the inhabitants of the capital flocked to witness the consummation of the cereOne of their most important festivals was mony. As the sad procession wound up that in honor of the god Tezcatlipoca, whose the sides of the pyramid the unhappy vicrank was inferior only to that of the su- tim threw away his gay chaplets of flowers preme being. He was called "the Soul of and broke in pieces the musical instruments the World" and supposed to have been its with which he had solaced the hours of capcreator. He was depicted as a handsome tivity. On the summit he was received by man endowed with perpetual youth. A six priests, whose long and matted locks year before the intended sacrifice a captive flowed disorderly over their sable robes, covdistinguished for his personal beauty and ered with hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic imwithout a blemish on his body was selected port. They led him to the sacrificial stone, to represent this deity. Certain tutors took a huge block of jasper with its upper surface Human sacrifices were adopted by the Aztecs early in the fourteenth century, about two hundred years before the Conquest. Rare at first, they became more frequent with the wider extent of their empire, till at length almost every festival was closed with this cruel abomination. These religious ceremonials were generally arranged in such a manner as to afford a type of the most prominent circumstances in the character or history of the deity who was the object of them. A single example will suf fice. . somewhat convex. On this the prisoner was stretched. Five priests secured his head and his limbs, while the sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle emblematic of his bloody office, dextrously opened the breast of the wretched victim with a sharp razor of itztli-a volcanic substance hard as flint—and, inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the palpitating heart. The minister of death, first hold ing this up toward the sun-an object of worship throughout Anahuac-cast it at the feet of the deity to whom the temple was devoted, while the multitudes below prostrated themselves in humble adoration. The tragic story of this prisoner was expounded by the priests as the type of human destiny, which, brilliant in its commencement, too often closes in sorrow and disaster. dressed in their festal robes and decked with the fresh blossoms of spring, they moved the hardest heart to pity, though their cries were drowned in the wild chant of the priests, who read in their tears a favorable augury for their petition. These innocent victims were generally bought by the priests of parents who were poor, but who stifled the voice of nature-probably less at the suggestions of poverty than of a wretched superstition. The most loathsome part of the story-the manner in which the body of the sacrificed captive was disposed of remains yet to be told. It was delivered to the warrior who had taken him in battle, and by him, after being dressed, was served up in an entertainment to his friends. This was not the coarse repast of famished cannibals, but a banquet teeming with delicious beverages and delicate viands, prepared with art and attended by both sexes, who conducted themselves with all the decorum of civilized life. Surely never were refinement and the extreme of barbarism brought prelim- barbarism brought so closely in contact with each other. Such was the form of human sacrifice usually practised by the Aztecs. It was the same that often met the indignant eyes of the Europeans in their progress through the country, and from the dreadful doom of which they themselves were not exempted. There were, indeed, some occasions when preliminary tortures of the most exquisite kindwith which it is unnecessary to shock the reader were inflicted, but they always terminated with the bloody ceremony above described. It should be remarked, however, that such tortures were not the spontaneous suggestions of cruelty, as with the North American Indians, but were all rigorously prescribed in the Aztec ritual. Women as well as the other sex were sometimes reserved for sacrifice. On some occasions, particularly in seasons of drought, at the festival of the insatiable Tlaloc, the god of rain, childrenfor the most part infants-were offered up. As they were borne along in open litters, Human sacrifices have been practised by many nations, not excepting the most polished nations of antiquity, but never by any on a scale to be compared with those in Anahuac. The 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 sacrifices 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 number becomes still more appalling. At the dedication of |