Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/351

 It is to be hoped that with the "regeneration of the Republic," this branch of tasteful science will be properly encouraged, and the remarkably ably acute and imitative talents of the natives subjected to a discipline, that cannot fail to rank the Mexicans high in the grade of distinguished art.

The old Spanish government supplied this Institution with a revenue of near twenty-five thousand dollars a year; and, at an expense of forty thousand dollars, safely transported to Mexico over the rough mountain roads and passes, a beautiful collection of casts of the most renowned statues and groups of antiquity. These, I am glad to say, are altogether uninjured, and still adorn the lonely halls of the neglected Academy.

I asked for the pictures of the former scholars, and a few were shown me, bad in coloring and worse in outline. I asked for the drawings; and the answer was, that there were none but a few sketches hung along the walls, bearing the date of long passed years. Among them, however, I could not avoid noticing a drawing in ink by one of the pupils, which, had it been executed on copper, would have yanked him high in the list of the engravers of the period.

The private collections of Mexico are not very numerous. Don José Gromez, ex-Conde de la Cortina, has a rare collection of offensive and defensive arms, ancient and modern, chronologically arranged. In addition to this, he has gathered a number of interesting memorials of his own country, together with some original pictures, and copies of the most distinguished artists of the Dutch, French, Flemish, Spanish and Italian schools. Among the painters are Murillo, Morales, Julio Romano, Paul Veronese, Salvator, Watteau, Mignard, David, and Laflond.

The Museum of Don José Mariano Sanchez y Mora, ex-Conde del Peñasco, is comprised in four branches:—Antiquities, natural history, paintings, and instruments of the physical sciences. His collection of coins is extremely valuable, consisting of upward of three thousand specimens; and his mineralogical cabinet is unquestionably the rarest in the Republic. The ores—amethysts, emeralds, and diamonds, would, alone, almost make the fortune of an European collector.

Don José was kind enough to permit me frequently to examine his Museum of Mexican Antiquities, and to present me with some rare and interesting idols. He possesses several Indian manuscripts in the ancient picture-writing, and a collection of dii penates talismans, amulets, and musical instruments made of serpentine, basalt and clay.