Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/290

246 plates which accompany this volume, for a better idea of the internal and external appearance of this sacred edifice, than we can convey by language alone.

Yet there are parts of the cathedral to which even the pencil cannot do justice. The floor of this magnificent temple,—made of loose and heavy boards, which are moveable at pleasure, in order to allow sepulture beneath them,—is the only part of it which seems neglected or shabby. Every thing else is gorgeous beyond conception, although the splendor is more colonially barbaric, than nationally classic. Profusion is the chief characteristic. It seems as if the priests and the pious worshippers had designed to heap up rather than arrange their offerings in honor of the Almighty, and as if their piles of precious metals would form the most graceful as well as grateful emblem of their religious sincerity. In the wilderness of columns, statues, shrines, oratories, altars and fonts, the traveller stands amazed and confused; and leaving the pictures of the church to demonstrate its complete effect, he retreats upon the metallic standards which surround him, in order to convey the best estimate of this queen of American temples.

The exterior walls front upwards of four hundred feet on the plaza, and run back about five hundred feet to the narrow street of Tacuba. Entering the main portal, whilst the huge bells are clanging in the two steeples above it, you face the choir for the clergy, which is built of rare, carved woods, and elaborately covered with gilded images, whose burnished surface flashes in the sunlight. Beyond this is the high altar, raised from the floor on an elevated platform, and covered with ornaments, crosses, and candle-sticks, wrought in the precious metals. From this sanctuary,—extending around the choir, and probably near two hundred feet in length,—runs a railing, between four and five feet high, and proportionally massive, composed of gold and silver very slightly alloyed with copper. And on the summit of the high altar rests the figure of the Virgin of Remedios, whose dowry in dresses, diamonds, emeralds and pearls is estimated at not less than three millions of dollars.

On the east of the cathedral, fronting the west, and bounding the whole eastern limit of the plaza, is the national palace, formerly the residence of the viceroys, and now occupied by the president, as a dwelling. It is an immense quadrangular building, constructed on the ground which it is supposed was covered by the palace of Axayacatl, in which Cortéz was lodged by Montezuma, when he first arrived in the Aztec capital. Besides affording room for the president and his family, this huge edifice contains all the offices of