Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/270

254 the ill treatment of her husband by the contemptible gift of twenty thousand dollars.

Mayorga was the victim apparently of an ill disposed minister who controled the pliant mind of Charles. The viceroy in reality had discharged his duties as lieutenant of the king, with singular fidelity. All branches of art and industry in Mexico received his fostering care; but he had enemies who sought his disgrace at court, and they were finally successful in their shameful efforts.

Don Matias Galvez, hastened rapidly from Guatemala to take possession of the viceroyalty, and soon exhibited his generous character and his ardent desire to improve and embellish the beautiful capital. The academy of fine arts was one of his especial favorites, and he insisted that Charles should not only endow it with nine thousand dollars, but should render it an effective establishment, by the introduction of the best models for the students. These evidences of his munificence and taste, still exist in the fine but untenanted halls of the neglected academy. Galvez directed his attention, also, to the police of Mexico and its prisons;—he required the streets to be leveled and paved; prohibited the raising of recruits for Manilla, and solicited from the king authority to reconstruct the magnificent palace of Chapultepec on the well known and beautiful hill of that name which lies about two miles west of the capital, still girt with its ancient cypresses.

It was during the brief reign of this personage that the political Gazette of Mexico was established, and the exclusive privilege of its publication granted to Manuel Valdez. On the 3d of November Don Matias died, after a brief illness, unusually lamented by the people, from amidst whose masses he had risen to supreme power in the most important colony of Spain. Mexico had regarded his appointment as a singular good fortune, and it was fondly but vainly hoped that his reign might have been long, and that he would have been enabled to carry out the beneficent projects he designed for the country.

As the death of this officer was sudden and unexpected, no carta de mortaja, or mortuary despatch, had been sent from Spain announcing his successor, and, accordingly the Audiencia assumed the reins of government until the arrival of the new viceroy.