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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 occu5 pations of man. Of these, there were thirteen principal deities, and more than two hundred inferior; to each of whom some special day, or appropriate festival, was consecrated.

At the head of all stood the terrible Mexican Mars ;* 10 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; 15 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 20 was the godt of the air, a divinity who, during his residence on earth, instructed the natives in the use of 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 25 him, the earth teemed with fruits and flowers, without the pains of culture. An ear of Indian corn was as much as å single man 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 30 melody of birds. In short, these were the halcyon days, which find a place in the mythic systems of so many nations of the Old World. It was the golden age of Anahuac.

From some cause, not explained, this god incurred the 35 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. When he reached. 40 the shores of the Mexican Gulf, he took leave of his followers, promising, that he and his descendants would revisit them hereafter, and then, entering his wizard skiff,

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made of serpents' skins, embarked on the great ocean for the fabled land of Tlapallan. He was said to have been tall in stature, with a white skin, long, dark hair, and a flowing beard. The Mexicans looked confidently to the 5 return of the benevolent deity; and this reinarkable tradition, deeply cherished in their hearts, prepared the way for the future success of the Spaniards.

LESSON LXXI.

-THE TRUE GREATNESS OF OUR COUNTRY.
W. H. SEWARD.

[From a Discourse before a Benevolent Society, in Baltimore.] At present, we behold only the rising of our sun of empire-only the fair seeds and beginnings of a great nation. Whether that glowing orb shall attain to a meridian height, or fall suddenly from its glorious sphere— 5 whether those prolific seeds shall mature into autumnal ripeness, or shall perish yielding no harvest, depends on God's will and providence. But God's will and providence operate not by casualty or caprice, but by fixed and revealed laws. If we would secure the greatness set before us, we 10 must find the way which those laws indicate, and keep within it. That way is new and all untried. We departed early-we departed at the beginning-from the beaten track of national ambition. Our lot was cast in an age of revolution-a revolution which was to bring all mankind 15 from a state of servitude to the exercise of self-government -from under the tyranny of physical force to the gentle sway of opinion, from under subjection to matter to dominion over nature.

It was ours to lead the way,-to take up the cross of 20 republicanism, and bear it before the nations, to fight its earliest battles, to enjoy its earliest triumphs, to illustrate its purifying and elevating virtues, and by our courage and resolution, our moderation and our magnanimity, to cheer and sustain its future followers through the baptism of 25 blood and the martyrdom of fire. A mission so noble and benevolent demands a generous and self-denying enthusiasm. Our greatness is to be won by beneficence without ambition. We are in danger of losing that holy zeal. We are surrounded by temptations. Our dwellings become 30 palaces, and our villages are transformed, as if by magic, into great cities. Fugitives from famine, and oppression, and the sword, crowd our shores, and proclaim to us that

we alone are free, and great, and happy. Our empire enlarges. The continent and its islands seem ready to fall within our grasp, and more than even fabulous wealth opens under our feet. No public virtue can withstand, 5 none ever encountered, such seductions as these. Our own virtue and moderation must be renewed and fortified, under circumstances so new and peculiar.

Where shall we seek the influence adequate to a task so arduous as this? Shall we invoke the press and the pulpit? 10 They only reflect the actual condition of the public morals, and cannot change them. Shall we resort to the executive authority? The time has passed when it could compose and modify the political elements around it. Shall we go

to the senate? Conspiracies, seditions, and corruptions, in 15 all free countries, have begun there. Wherc, then, shall we go to find an agency that can uphold and renovate declining public virtue? Where should we go but there, where all republican virtue begins and must end? where the Promethean fire is ever to be rekindled until it shall 20 finally expire? where motives are formed and passions disciplined? To the domestic fireside and humble school, where the American citizen is trained. Instruct him there, that it will not be enough that he can claim for his country Lacedæmonian heroism, but that more than Spartan valor 25 and more than Roman magnificence is required of her. Go, then, ye laborers in a noble cause; gather the young Catholic and the young Protestant alike into the nursery of freedom; and teach them there that, although Religion has many and different shrines on which may be made the 30 offering of a "broken spirit," which God will not despise ; yet that their country has appointed only one altar and one sacrifice for all her sons, and that ambition and avarice must be slain on that altar, for it is consecrated to HUMANITY.

LESSON LXXII.-
.-ZENOBIA'S AMBITION.WILLIAM WARE.

I am charged with pride and ambition. The charge is true, and I glory in its truth. Who ever achieved any thing great in letters, arts, or arms, who was not ambitious? Cæsar was not more ambitious than Cicero. It 5 was but in another way. All greatness is born of ambition. Let the ambition be a noble one, and who shall blame it? I confess I did once aspire to be queen, not

only of Palmyra, but of the East. That I am. I now aspire to remain so. Is it not an honorable ambition ? Does it not become a descendant of the Ptolemies and of Cleopatra? I am applauded by you all for what I have 5 already done. You would not it should have been less.

But why pause here? Is so much ambition praiseworthy, and more criminal? Is it fixe. in nature that the limits of this empire should be Egypt, on the one hand, the Hellespont and the Euxine, on the other? Were not 10 Suez and Armenia more natural limits? Or hath empire no natural limit, but is broad as the genius that can devise, and the power that can win. Rome has the West. Let Palmyra possess the East. Not that nature prescribes this and no more. The gods prospering, and I swear not 15 that the Mediterranean shall hem me in upon the west, or Persia on the east. Longinus is right, I would that the world were mine. I feel, within, the will and the power to bless it, were it so.

Are not my people happy? I look upon the past and 20 the present, upon my nearer and remoter subjects, and ask nor fear the answer. Whom have I wronged?—what province have I oppressed?-what city pillaged?—what region drained with taxes?-whose life have I unjustly taken, or estates coveted or robbed ?-whose honor have I 25 wantonly assailed ?—whose rights, though of the weakest and poorest, have I trenched upon ?-I dwell, where I would ever dwell, in the hearts of my people. It is written in your faces, that I reign not more over you than within you. The foundation of my throne is not more

30 power, than love.

Suppose now, my ambition add another province to our realm. Is it an evil? The kingdoms already bound to us by the joint acts of ourself and the late royal Odenatus, we found discordant and at war. They are now united 35 and at peace. One harmonious whole has grown out of hostile and sundered parts. At my hands they receive a common justice and equal benefits. The channels of their commerce have I opened, and dug them deep and sure. Prosperity and plenty are in all their borders. The streets 40 of our capital bear testimony to the distant and various industry which here seeks its market.

This is no vain boasting:-receive it not so, good friends. It is but truth. He who traduces himself, sins with him who traduces another. He who is unjust to himself, or

less than just, breaks a law, as well as he who hurts his neighbor. I tell you what I am, and what I have done, that your trust for the future may not rest upon ignorant grounds. If I am more than just to myself, rebuke me. 5 If I have overstepped the modesty that became me, I am open to your censure, and will bear it.

But I have spoken, that you may know your queen,— not only by her acts, but by her admitted principles. I tell you then that I am ambitious,-that I crave dominion, 10 and while I live will reign. Sprung from a line of kings, a throne is my natural seat. I love it. But I strive, too, -you can bear me witness that I do,-that it shall be, while I sit upon it, an honored, unpolluted seat. If I can, I will hang a yet brighter glory around it.

LESSON LXXIII.-TRIALS OF THE POET AND THE SCHOLAR.-
GEO. S. HILLARD.

In a highly civilized age, the poet finds himself perplexed with contradictions which he cannot reconcile, and anomalies which he cannot comprehend. Coming out from the soft ideal world, in which he has dreamed away 5 his youth, he is constantly repelled by some iron reality. The aspect of life to him seems cold, hard and prosaic. It renews the legend of Edipus and the Sphinx. With a face of stone, it propounds to him a riddle, which he must guess or be devoured. It is an age of frightful ex10 tremes of social condition; of colossal wealth and heartcrushing poverty; of courts and custom-houses; of cornlaws and game-laws; of man-traps and spring-guns.

The smoke from the almshouse and the jail, blots the pure sky. The race of life is not to the swift, nor its bat15 tle to the strong. A sensitive conscience, a delicate taste, the gift of genius, and the ornament of learning, are rather obstacles, than helps, in the way of what is called success. Men are turned into petrifactions by the slow-dropping influences of artificial life. The heroic virtues of the elder 20 age, have vanished with its free speech, and its simple manners. There seems to be no pulse of hearty life in any thing, whether it be good or bad. Virtue is timid, and vice is cunning. Love is cold and calculating, and hatred masks its dagger with a smile.

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In this world of hollow forms and gilded seeming, the claims of the poet are unheeded, and his voice unheard.

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