WHEN Cortez made of the Mexican empire a province of Spain he overthrew a dynasty which had dictated its decrees from the city of Tenochtitlan for about a period of a century and a half. From 1522 to 1530, the new and distant province was ruled from Spain by a Governor General, or a Commission. In 1530 the first Viceroy, Mendoza Count of Tendilla, arrived in Mexico from Spain. In 1821, the last Spanish Viceroy, O'Donogue, signed the treaty of Cordova, which conceded on the part of Spain the independence which Mexico had managed to win for herself. The extinct vice royalty of nearly three hundred years of age, was succeeded by the shortlived empire of Iturbide. The latter held a commission in the royal army, and to his well-timed treachery Mexico was, perhaps, in some measure indebted for getting free of Spain, and becoming chained to a far greater despotism. Iturbide reigned precisely after the style subsequently adopted by Louis Napoleon. He was, however, less successful against conspiracies, was deposed, banished, but handsomely provided for. Had he been a philosopher, -nay, had he possessed only the common sense which philosophy sometimes despises, he would have submitted with good grace to the destitution gilded by a pension of some thousands" per

ann.

He did otherwise; and he left Piccadilly one morning only to be incontinently shot as soon as he set foot on the soil of the Republic, which re

fused to acknowledge him. This was in 1824. Since that period, Mexico has been under the charge of a series of generally incapable, ambitious, and unscrupulous presidents. It would be difficult to say how many have presided over the republic, for revolutions have been, in the quarter of a century that has elapsed, as numerous as the festivals. Men have been raised to power, unceremoniously turned out of it, and unreasonably restored, to be again deprived, and again elevated to dignity. Presidents ad interim appear only to increase the confusion. Of regular presidents there have been a dozen. The present occupier of the place was first elected in 1833. He immediately overthrew the federal constitution, and went over to the centralists and despotism. His old friends, the constitutionalists, turned him out in 1836, and his first tenure of office was signalized by the loss of Texas. After the new constitution had been sorely mauled and trampled on by its own unnatural parents, Santa Anna recovered his old post in 1845, was again ejected, and once more restored in 1846, when he, by re-adopting federalism, was appointed generalissimo of the army. În the following year he was both out and in; and then came exile, followed in 1852 by the recovery of power. He is no statesman, and nobody suspects him of patriotism. His popularity is based on his having luckily lost a leg when he still more luckily defeated a detachment of French troops at Vera

and loyalty, he was a stupendous swindler, and so ingenious in cruelty as to have left a name covered with infamy even in Mexico. The Christian generals who fought in the war of independance were too often as bad as Branciforte. This butcher cut not less than fourteen thousand throats in the market-place of Guanajuato. Men, women, and children, the defenceless inhabitants of the place were thus slaughtered at the fountain,-not that Calliga particularly loved to behold blood, but that he really was too ill. provided with ammunition to despatch his victims by powder and shot. Surely the stench of this Christian butchery at the polluted springs of Guanajuato was not less offensive to the recording angel who registered the deed than was that which so disgusted the refined Diaz in the Mexican temple, more redolent of gore than the slaughter-houses of Castille? Was the crime of the heathen and ignorant emperor a greater outrage in the eye of the Lord of Mercy than that of this piouslyreared Calliga, who, in 1811, coolly ordered the extermination of the inhabitants of every town or village that showed symptoms of adherence to the rebels? Which was the more practical Christian, Guatemozin, who slew because he had been taught that to kill an enemy was to serve God, or this same Calliga again, who celebrated the New Year's day of 1812 by decimating the inhabitants of Saltepec, and razing the whole of the city, save the convents and the churches-in one of which he outraged high Heaven by celebrating a Te Deum in honour of his sanguinary achievement? Similar atrocities were committed by him in honour of heaven and loyalty at Cuantla de Amilpas, and indeed wherever the chances of war proved favourable to his arms. It must have been with the remembrance of men like Calliga in his mind that the illogical Indian protested to a highly-scandalised priest, that he would prefer hell with his brother heathens to paradise in partnership with orthodox Spaniards. The annals of the last years of the expiring Viceroyalty are crowded with the records of cruelty like those I have noticed above. It is unnecessary to cite more in order to prove that the Spaniards cared little for practising

what they professed, and that they were so far worse than the Mexican aborigines, at whose cruelty they expressed much intense horror; that, with better instruction, they were, for the most part, more cruel savages to their own brethren than were Guatemozin and his people to the few captive Spaniards whom they swiftly slew. While we condemn both, however, let us not be too eager to boast that the cruelties alluded to were characteristic of heathenism or popery exclusively. The massacre of Glencoe alone would be sufficient to annihilate such a boast. On the other hand, let us, rather than occupy ourselves with the laboriously idle occupation of drawing comparisons, cite a fact that, in the person of the principal individual concerned therein, does honour to human nature.

In 1812, Bravo, the rebel chief, took Palmar by storm, and the three hundred captives who fell into his power were offered by him to the Viceroy Venegas, in exchange for his father, Don Leonardo Bravo. The viceroy replied to the offer by ordering the immediate execution of the sire of the patriot chief. The latter took a godlike revenge for the bloody and unnecessary deed, by instantly liberating all his prisoners;-he was the more eager that they should be free and beyond his power, because, in the first bitterness of his grief and his fury, he felt an irresistible temptation to slay them all, to avenge his parent's death. It was better avenged as it was; and the name of Bravo will not only recal the glorious deed, but will serve to sound the never-dying echoes of its praise.

It has been remarked as a singular circumstance, and one illustrative of the injustice of Spain towards Mexico, that of the five dozen and two viceroys who represented the majesty of Iberia between the two oceans, only one was a native of the province. The numbers of royal governors I have variously stated at being sixty-two and sixty-three. The difference arises from a reason similar to that which affects the roll of the popes, according as historians admit to or exclude from the list the name of Pope Joan. So with regard to the viceroys. In 1810, Venegas was so utterly perplexed by the breaking out of the revolution of

that year, that he solemnly resigned his office to the Virgin of Los Remedios, who was installed in his place, but who was by no means successful in her government, or happily served by those who exercised office in her illustrious name. Our Lady of Remedies had none for the Mexican disease. The latter was mortal, and the viceroyships were put up for sale, as was the Roman empire in the days of its irretrievable decadence. Very few indeed of those who executed that office fulfilled it to the honour or advantage of the country, or to the profit of any individuals but themselves. The object was to acquire wealth speedily and hasten home to spend it. The commercial laws which they dispensed ruined the province without permanently benefiting the mother-country. The former could purchase only of the latter, and every article was subjected to a duty each time that it changed hands. Foreign ships venturing to touch at Mexican ports were liable to seizure, and they who dared to trade with any captain or supercargo who did not sail in a Spanish bottom did so with the penalty of death menacing them from the columns of the commercial code! The very olives and vines were rooted up, because the Cadiz merchants complained that their cultivation especially affected their wine trade-and whole districts were left uncultivated and water-power neglected, simply that the Spanish traders might grow rich at the cost of the Mexican people. The government regarded the education of that people with a species of ridiculous horror. The gold which Mexico paid back for being systematically oppressed and studiously kept in the most besotted ignorance, corrupted Spain and helped her to her downfall among nations. For all her misgovernment, however, Mexico had as great revenge; and if Cortez and his Spaniards introduced small-pox into the country, the daughters of the land returned the compliment with compound interest. But of the ladies I will speak anon; let us, in the meantime, look for a moment at the figure of their lord.

Montezuma must be acknowledged to have been "every inch a king;" something effeminate, perhaps, like Sardanapalus,-as fond of life, but as

weary of the trouble to which he was put in preserving it. He lived in a splendid city, and on the terraced roofs of his own palace thirty knights could have found place for tilt and tournament. He possessed terrible armories, huge granaries, glittering aviaries, howling menageries, and a museum in which he had "collected all the human deformities which nature had erred in making." The palace gardens were a terrestrial paradise; the imperial halls were worthy of a potentate so powerful and so revered, wherein to keep his state; and there were bowers and boudoirs withal wherein a thousand Aztec Pompadours maintained a dignity which brought with it no shame. The barbaric Solomon reigned in peace the lord of so many separate affections. We do not know how the rivals of the hour settled their differences, but in more civilized countries such an establishment would have been productive of more noise than arose from the menagerie itself. The emperor fed daintily on costly fare served with a world of ceremony. In all his epicurean tastes he was a gentleman; in all, save one. He had a little foible, and would occasionally, it is said, not disdain to eat a small portion of a nicely baked baby. It was a sensual indulgence only enjoyed on high festivals, and the people generally are said by Diaz to have been as fond of the dainty dish as was their master. He was, moreover, a careful dresser, and a clean. He certainly possessed the virtue that is said to be next to godliness. bably none of his contemporary brother monarchs in Europe were so constant in their ablutions. Four times daily he changed his apparel, and never put on again the dress he had once worn, or defiled his lips twice with the same vessels from which he fed. What a fortune he must have been to his valet and steward! and how much more cleanly a master, in every respect, had they than the Duc de Saint Simon, whose sovereign lord Louis XIV. never missed mass, indeed, but once in his life, but who changed his royal shirt, even as he shaved, only on alternate days, and took medicine of a morning from the hand of Scarron's old widow, talking the while after a fashion that would have made Montezuma blush.

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