Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/202

198 has left a stamp upon Mexico which one generation of comparatively tranquil independence cannot be expected to efface. A traveller who passed through the country many years ago saw a face peering out of a window upon a vista of wonderful beauty. Whether prisoner or recluse he knew not, but said through the grating, "How beautiful!" "Transeuntibus," was the laconic answer, — "To those who pass by." So has it been with Mexico. Beautiful to those who robbed her, beautiful to the tourist, her real condition is one which depresses her own people, whose poverty, ignorance, and loneliness make them the most pitiable, as they are certainly the most kindly and polite, people on this continent.