Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/71

 lover, pouring out a passion which the scribe puts into becoming phraseology. It is an important trade; and more money is earned in Mexico by this proxy-making love, than perhaps anywhere else. You can have a "declaration" for one rial; a scolding letter for a medio; and an up-braiding epistle, full of daggers, jealousy, love, and tenderness, (leaving the unfortunate recipient in a very distracted state of mind,) done upon azure paper be-sprinkled with hearts and doves, for the ridiculous price of twenty-five cents!

West of the Parian, and all around the southern and western sides of the Plaza, or those portions of it which are not directly occupied by the Cathedral and National Palace, run the arched, similar to the arcades of Bologna. These are filled with gay shops, peddlers, caffés, old clothes, toys, flower-venders, sweetmeats, bookstalls, cutlers, curiosityhunters, antiquities, (veritable and doubtful,) and the usual crowd of loungers and quidnuncs. Here the last revolution, or the probability of a new one, is in continual discussion, by knots of idlers. Above stairs, in some of the dwellings, are gambling-houses, as formerly in the Palais Royal, with which the scene here presented does not, of course, vie in taste or splendor.

Opposite to the southern end of the Parian is the Casa Municipal, or town-hall, in the lower story of which is the Lonja, (the Exchange of the merchants of Mexico,) a noble room, filled with all the gazettes of the Republic, of Europe, and the United States, and adjoined by an apartment in which readers may occasionally amuse themselves with a game of billiards.

Descending from the tower of the Cathedral, let us enter the doors of the sacred edifice.

Its floor is of loose disjointed boards, filled with dirt and filth-—the covering of the many dead who lie mouldering beneath. But with this, all meanness ends; and whether we contemplate the dimensions of the edifice, or the millions that have been spent upon its decoration, the mind is lost in wonder. It is impossible for me to describe the whole of this building to you-—a book would not suffice for the immense and minute detail with which its walls and altars are embellished.

In order to afford you some idea of the wealth of the church, generally-— and passing over plate glass and crystal, silver frames, lamps, carving and gilding enough to make an ordinary metropolitan church blaze with splendor-—I will only mention one object in the body of the building: the altar and its accessories.

The Cathedral occupies a space of 500 feet by 420 front. The main altar is not erected against the wall, but near the centre of the edifice, beneath the dome. From this, extending around the choir probably two