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348 Mycenæ into the shade and rival the remains of Cambodia, as "the village Indians of Central America." Making the utmost allowances, the town of Mexico was a large town, much larger than ancient Athens, and could only be called a "village" by a theorist with an hypothesis to maintain. Mr. Morgan spoke of the Mexicans as "a barbarous people without field agriculture." Yet he quotes Herrera's description of "the beauty of the fields most regularly cultivated" in Peru; and no one, we think, has maintained that, in husbandry, the Peruvians were in advance of the Aztecs. Nay, from Sahagun and Cieza de Leon we learn that maize played an equal part in the civilisation and religion of both countries, and the Aztecs had a Demeter, a goddess of agriculture, of their own. The great golden treasures of the temples were not exaggerated by the Spaniards, nor was the elaborate hieratic system with its splendour and cruelties. No such wealth, no such ritual magnificence can be found in the huts and the snake-feasts of village Indians, Zunis and Moquis. Mr. Morgan laughs at the "secretaries" of Montezuma. How could there be secretaries, he asks, where there was no "cursive writing"? Apparently he never heard of the famous statue of the secretary of the ancient empire in Egypt, or the other representations of kneeling scribes in a land and age where writing could scarcely be called "cursive" any more than the picture-writing of Mexico. If we had nothing but the Mexican MSS. reproduced by Lord Kingsborough, those alone would prove how remote from the birch-bark scrawls of "village Indians" was the Aztec schrift. The Egyptian scribe, by the way (Chipiez and Perrot, i. 192), is naked, save for a breech-cloth. Mr. Morgan tries to make out that the Aztecs were no better dressed. If it were true, it does not follow that Aztec was inferior to Egyptian civilisation. Mr. Morgan was much shocked by the notion that Montezuma was approached with Oriental reverence. He was only a "sachem," says Mr. Morgan. It cannot be true that people were obliged to take