deign to mention them, we may infer from their occasional descriptions of the city what were the pursuits and character of its inhabitants. A market-place is the best family picture of a city; and nothing in Mexico seems to have surprised the Spaniards, even those who had served in Italy and the East, more than the great square where every kind of merchandise was offered for sale. They said that a market-place so skilfully laid out, so large, so well managed, and so full of people, they had never seen.' Mr. Helps thus describes it :

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'In this vast area each kind of merchandise had its own quarter, and it would be difficult to specify any kind which was not to be seen there. To begin with the noblest and the most shameful merchandise, namely, that of human beings, there were as many to be found as the negroes whom the Portuguese bring from Guinea. Then every kind of eatable, every form of dress, medicines, perfumes, unguents, furniture, fruit, wrought gold and silver, lead, tin, brass, and copper, adorned the porticoes, and allured the passer-by. Paper, that great material of civilisation, was to be obtained in this wonderful emporium; also every kind of earthenware, salt, wood, tobacco, razors made of obsidian, dressed and undressed skins, cotton of all colours in skeins, painters' colours, building materials, and manure; wine, honey, wax, charcoal, and little dogs. Convenience was well considered; porters were to be hired, and refreshments to be obtained. One curious thing, which Cortez noticed, was that every com"modity was sold by number or by measure, and not by weight."

'With regard to the regulations under which this vast bazaar was held, it may be noticed, that the Mexicans had arrived at that point of civilisation, where fraud is frequent in the sale of goods; but, superior even to ourselves in this day, they had a counterpoise in a body of officers called judges, who sat in a court-house on the spot, and before whom all causes and matters relating to the market were tried. There were also officers who went continually about the market-place, watching what was sold, and the measures which were used. When they found a false one, they broke it. This market was so much frequented, that the busy hum of all the buying and selling might be heard for a league off."

On reading that every thing was to be had in the Mexican market which men can desire, except, as our author drily remarks, bills of exchange, newspapers, and books,' we are tempted to exclaim, what need these outlaws conquerors should 'have?' and our admiration at such marks of civilisation in a nation comparatively of yesterday is heightened as we learn that her gardens were as rich as those of Damascus: her canals as populous with boats as those of Venice: that she was supplied with water by a double aqueduct raised on masonry, and little if at all inferior to the Marcian aqueduct of Rome; and that her streets and causeways were kept scrupulously clean, while a regular

police watched over the security and the morals of her inhabitants. Well might the Spaniard, accustomed to the narrow lanes and puny squares of his Gothic cities, and whose highest conceptions of an imperial capital at the time were realised in Granada, find no parallel, except in the dreams of romance, for the city of Montezuma.

But we must now turn to a second comparison between the Old and the New World. The scene now shifts to a narrower plain than that of Babylon, terminated on the eastern horizon by bluff cliffs of porphyry, and westward by limestone terraces, and nearly bisected by a river even more majestic than the Euphrates. Intense life is here clasped in the embrace of barren death, since the cultivated land is immediately bordered by wastes of sand and rock. But wherever irrigation extends on either bank of the river, and far inland as the eye can reach, the level ground is radiated by canals, covered with abundant crops of corn and leguminous plants, or studded with temples, palaces, barracks, and warehouses, and all the emblems of a warlike and commercial people. The river itself, the great highway of the kingdom, is covered with innumerable vessels from the raft of reeds to the hundred-oared baris, and compelled to flow between quays and wharfs built of the red granite of Syene. Less lofty than the porticoes, obelisks, or avenues of statues among which it grew, yet taller than any other tree of the Libyan forest, the palm tree, like the mast of some 'great ammiral,' rears its heavy plumage over field and garden, or reflects itself in lucid tanks and pools. And within this

city, the hundred-gated Thebes, is neither rest nor idleness from dawn to sunset. Its factories supply Libya, Arabia, and Syria, and the southern isles of the Egean with the fine linen, the embroidered armour, and the delicately carved jewels of Egypt; its armies or its merchants move incessantly to and fro between the great haven of Adulè, between Meröe, Nilotic isle,' to Sais beside the great northern waters, and to the fane of Ammon in the Libyan waste. No man was idle in Thebes, even childhood had its appointed task: but no one could alter or improve his condition in the working world. The son of a priest was devoted from his birth to priestly ministrations; the offspring of a soldier must become a soldier himself: the mason and the carpenter could neither enter another guild, nor be inventive in his own art, for a rigid system of castes prescribed his functions in life before he drew vital breath. The lot of an Egyptian king may have been more externally splendid than that of a hewer of wood or a drawer of water, yet it can hardly have been less irksome to a liberal or active mind. For to the king,

as to the meanest of his subjects, his speech, gestures, knowledge, and even his diet, at least in public, were prescribed by laws as immutable as the rocks in which he was destined to be entombed. The civilisation of Egypt was the triumph of sacerdotal power over the natural impulses of mankind.

It was repeated and rivalled in a land which, at the time when Rameses the Third led his armies to the shores of the Euxine, was probably peopled only by those hideous and gigantic broods which have preceded man on the globe. What corresponding circumstances may have led the ancestors of the Pharaohs and those of the Incas to nearly the same theory of government, we shall consider presently; but the similarity of the institutions which they respectively founded, is most remarkable. As in Egypt the lands were divided among the priests, including the priest-king, the soldiers, and the husbandmen; so in Peru it was parcelled between the sun, the Inca, and the people. In Egypt the yearly inundations of the river made necessary an annual re-distribution of the land: in Peru, without a like pretext, the practice was the same. "Every Peru'vian,' says the historian, received yearly his share of land, 'which depended upon the number of his family. The chiefs 'and rulers received larger portions.' In the division of the people, Egypt, so far as we know, was surpassed in rigour by Peru. On the theory that the Inca, as priest-king, was the representative of the sun, that is, of the world's creator and monarch, every institution was so devised as to secure for him nearly unlimited obedience from his subjects.

'The whole country,' says Mr. Helps, 'under their dominion was ruled with the strictness of a Roman army. There were decurions (the word reminds us of a very similar system in Latium), each of whom ruled over ten men; ten of these decurions and their men were under a centurion; ten centurions and their men obeyed another official chief; and ten of these chiefs, with those under their command, formed a department under the sway of one ruler. In the several handicrafts the son succeeded the father.'

It would be easy to multiply instances of the similarity between the early civilisation of Western Asia and Africa and that of Mexico and Peru-such as the feeding of the people from public granaries, the taxes paid in labour and in produce, the colossal temples and pyramids, and all the signs of the many existing for the one. It will be more instructive, however, to mark the physical or moral causes of this resemblance, as well as the moment at which the political system of the Red Man encountered the arms and arts of the White.

First, then, in all these regions, the climate, though hot, was

not enervating, and though the soil demanded labour, it amply rewarded it. Food, therefore, was easily obtained, and abundance was, as usual, accompanied by a dense population. But food was the only urgent necessity of life; a single garment was clothing enough, and, unless for culinary purposes, firing was seldom needed. Much of the labourer's time, accordingly, would have been at his own disposal had not the state stepped in to exact it for public works, and the grand scale on which these were executed, implying at once the cheapness of food and labour, has already been mentioned. Again, in all these instances it is manifest that individual action was nearly, if not wholly, sacrificed to the corporate interest of the state. Now a state which rules by civil edicts alone has a comparatively slight hold on its members. For limiting the will of man, so that myriads shall walk in the track of one, or of one privileged order, from generation to generation, there is needed a power stronger than decemviral Ten Tables, or even than Draconian codes. That power exists in religion or superstition alone, and accordingly we find that in America, as in Asia and in Egypt, civilisation rested on a basis of sacerdotal despotism, which forbade change, and inculcated obedience as the be-all and endall of human duty. That Indian civilisation was arrested before it began to decay, while that of Egypt and Western Asia accomplished its full term, was owing, in part, to the feebler organisation of the Indian race, but still more to the circumstance of its being confronted earlier with the might of Europe. For if under comparatively peaceful treatment the Red Man in North America has nearly vanished before the Pale Faces, and if with scarcely inferior muniments of war neither Egypt nor Assyria could strive long with the phalanxes or the legions of Europe, the races of Central America, with their slight armour and their rude weapons, had small chance against men locked in steel and wielding such instruments as the lance, the sword, and the matchlock. It was truly, in all respects, impar congressus; for Mexico and Peru were then starting in the race, and unconsciously repeating the exhausted processes of the eastern world, while their conquerors inherited not only the civilisation which sprang from the Church, but that also which was transmitted from the arts of Greece, the laws of Rome, and the institutions of the Teutonic nations.

We have anticipated Mr. Helps's narrative in surveying thus early the political systems of the two great Indian empires; but we now return to those important chapters of his work in which he examines the character and policy of the conquerors. We have already remarked that the miseries of the

Indians were owing rather to the colonists, than to any neglect, or even any signal errors, on the part of the home government. That the humane and pious Isabella was always in intention the benefactress of the oppressed; and, when not misled by her spiritual directors, wisely careful for their weal, has never been doubted. But equal credit for moderation has not hitherto been given to the more worldly-minded partner of her bed and throne. Without formally defending him, Mr. Helps exhibits Ferdinand in an unusually favourable light, and disperses some prejudices as to the impenetrable mystery of the Spanish council chamber, and the inaccessibility of Spanish kings. That Isabella and her consort were at times deceived by imperfect reports, by interested representations, by the novelty of the circumstances, and even by their own political or religious prejudices, was merely a condition twin-born with their greatness;' but that they were open to petitions, and were not even offended by honest rebukes, will appear from the following abridgment of scenes in council, or minutes of consultation on Indian affairs, as reported in Mr. Helps's pages.

Immediately after the first return of Columbus, and before the echoes from his triumph had died away, the prosaic business of framing a scheme of government for the islands was begun. One or two clauses in the instructions given to him reflect the piety and humanity of the Catholic sovereigns. The admiral was ordered to labour in all possible ways to 'bring the dwellers in the Indies to a knowledge of the Holy Catholic Faith.' He and all the armada' are charged to deal 'lovingly' with the Indians, and to 'honour' them much; and if by chance any persons should treat them ill, the admiral has full powers to chastise such evil doers. England bears, or at least deserves of late years to bear, a fair reputation for dealing justly and considerately with the coloured subjects of her realm; yet we doubt whether more humane instructions than these, which were signed in 1493, have ever issued from Leadenhall Street or Downing Street.

In the following year a despatch was received from Columbus, which still further elicited these honourable sentiments. In this paper he treads, for the first time, upon dangerous ground -ignes suppositos cineri doloso'—the question of slavery. He had sent home from the Cannibal Islands as slaves certain Indians, and suggests that they should be baptized and taught Castilian, so that they might act as interpreters to the missionaries. The admiral argues that, in the first place, these men's souls will be saved, and, in the second, that he and his company will gain much credit from the islanders generally by their capture of

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