Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/260

224 Mexico, and who, in most cases, have given their lives ungrudgingly in the hope that their blood would benefit the country of their birth or adoption. The lion-like Guatemotzin, last monarch of the Aztecs; the valiant priest Hidalgo; Rayon; Morelos; Mina; the brave Iturbide; the unfortunate Maximilian; the brilliant Mexia; Juarez; Lerdo; Madero—surely no other land on earth can display such a roll of sacrificial patriotism! Each in his own way, although treading in widely different paths, helped to mould Mexico into a nation: some with a personal incentive, others by reason of a purer and more patriotic instinct, but none wholly without the good of the country at heart. Were all the pains, the struggles, the Herculean labours of those gigantic figures in vain the mere contortions of Titans imprisoned in an Ætna seething with eternal political unrest? No; for from out the wreck of its stormy past, when the day of trial is over, Mexico, that land of legend and romance, more various than Greece, more mysterious than Egypt, shall arise to an era greater and more brilliant than any that is sung of in her myth or chronicled in the dazzling story of her conquest. Till that day dawns, it must be hers—


 * Viva Mexico! Viva el Pueblo Mexicano!