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 fascination in being behind the scenes, and I confess that this little opportunity of finding out what was thought of itself by a country which has jarred so much with our own was one of the attractions of being in Mexico. The American war is accounted for as a wicked attempt to sustain and annex the revolted province of Texas; and equally good solutions are found for the various other invasions by foreign powers.

What! is there no absolute right? Are all combatants like striking for their altars and their fires, and resisting wanton aggression? Will not these Mexicans even yet admit, though beaten, and though it has passed into history, that they terrorized our frontier, and oppressed an industrious and enterprising province? Why, then, perhaps both sides were wrong; and let us aspire for the day when all such quarrels may be settled by an international arbitration.

The young Mexican learns first about his Aztec ancestry, the mild semi-civilized aborigines, who built cities and temples, and were ruled by luxurious Montezuma and scholarly Nezhualcoyotl. The latter, at Texcoco, was a maker of verses and stoical maxims like another Marcus Aurelius.

Cortez conquered the Aztecs in 1519. Then followed a government of nearly three hundred years by sixty-four Spanish viceroys. A rebellion, of eleven years' duration, marked by many of the features of a servile uprising, drove out the Spaniards in 1821. Grasping and inconsiderate in their colonial management as their way has always been, the Spaniards had probably only themselves to thank for it.

Iturbide, who commanded the revolt at the end, made