Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/116

Rh create a taste for the fine arts. In these, many of the natives excel; a lhct, which may be proved by reference to the various sculptures and copies of paintings which have been executed by their different artists. Indeed, in the present day, they can boast a miniature painter altogether self-taught, who, for exactness of resemblance, if not for delicacy of finish, my be placed in competition with almost any European.

As musical instrument makers, they are by no means contemptible. Two or three of the organs used in the churches, and particularly a very fine one in the cathedral, were manufactured in the city, and both in tone and outward ornament, they are equal to the majority built in Europe. Every species of fancy work they produce with great delicacy. The makers of artificial flowers surpass in the exactnass of their imitations of nature our English manufacturers; and the workers in wax, a tribe little known amongst us, succeed admirably in the production of models and specimens.