Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/203

Rh

we look more closely at the Mexico of this century, of this quarter of the century, and of the present decade, it becomes apparent that a change, organic and constitutional, has been silently coming upon this ancient and secluded country. It is not a change brought about by war, nor substantially advanced by diplomacy. It is a silent revolution, moving gently in the footsteps of peace. We must seek the evidences of it in education, agriculture, and manufactures, and in the sources and uses of revenue.

The story of education in Mexico is one of hopelessly tangled threads. As the mystic symbols on the monuments of Egypt have only begun to yield their secrets to the archælogist, we need not despair of yet knowing something of the antiquity of a country whose age is beyond present estimate, and whose earliest civilization,