Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/125



by a broad flight of steps at the eastern end of the courtyard, you reach the second story of the University building, in which are the National Museum and the halls appropriated to students. On the ground floor, are a rather shabby and neglected chapel and the collegehall or recitation-room, the latter of which reminded me of some of the fine monastic chambers of the Old World, with their high ceilings, lofty windows, dark walls, carved pulpit, and oaken seats, brown with the hues of venerable age.

On the wall at the end of the first flight, as you ascend to the upper story, there is a huge picture, which covers the whole back of the building. It represents a court ceremony of the time of Charles IV.; and from the ugliness of the faces, and the characteristic mien of all the figures, there can be no doubt that it is a faithful representation, both of the persons and costume of the period depicted.

The first room you enter on your right, is a large hall which, like everything public I have yet seen in this Republic, is neglected and lumbered. Around the cornice hangs a row of the portraits of the Viceroys, in the stiff and formal guise of their several periods. Some are in military costume, some in monkish, some in civil, and some in the outlandish frills, furbelows and finery of the last century; but whether it be of wisdom, or of wickedness, nature has invariably stamped a decided character on every head.

In one corner of this apartment stand the remains of a throne, deposited among the rubbish as no longer valuable in a Republic. Near it, however, and in strange contrast, is placed the incomplete basso-relievo of a trophy of liberty; and above this, against the wall, in a rude coffin of rough pine boards, hangs a mummy, dug up not long ago on the fields of Tlaltelolco north of the city.

Yet this room is not altogether destitute of interest, if you can induce the keeper to open the shutters. The light then falls upon portraits of Ferdinand and Isabella at the end of the hall, which are worthy of the pencil of Velasquez.

Passing to the adjoining sala, we enter the Museum of Mexican