Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/195

 Rh from angels rather than from apes. The power that slowly and thricely swings the hammer ere it strikes the blow, seems so labored and so human that we are sure it must be man. It is so, we find, but man changed into a machine—oiled, and burnished, and operating like clock-work exactly.

You will notice here the number of the churches. Though French cannon have blown some of them to pieces, and Mexican changes have opened streets through others, still the domes and turrets are very numerous, much more so than the needs of the city. Chief of these are the Campaña, or Jesuits' church, and the San Francisco, which stands near the eastern gate, over against the Alameda, with its paved court along the street-side, covering an acre or more; its deep arcades once used for priestly refreshment, now as barracks for soldiers; and its tall, square, ungainly towers, that look as if they could stand many an earthquake and bombardment, as they have already done for a hundred years and more. They all have one model: a dome over the centre of the cross, and two towers at the front or long end of the cross. That is the model of the Mexican church; no pinnacle, no shaft, no Gothic arch—Moorish and Spanish, and that only.

Descend and look at this cathedral. It stands, four feet above the street, on a raised pavement that is of vast proportions. It is not less than three hundred feet before you reach the church from the beginning of this rock-built terrace. The effect is very majestic. A plaza spreads beyond this outside church floor, with a garden and flowers, surrounded by a street, and inclosed by a very wide and shaded arcade, filled with curiosity seekers and sellers.

The side wall of the church rises vast, almost windowless and pillaress, a naked wall of dark gray rock. Enter. The effect is grand and profound; more so, I think, than in any edifice I have seen on this continent, and surpassed by but few on the other. The towers rise in grand proportions, and the bells drop down the richest fruit of melody. Its pillars are of the same dark porphyritic rock, but are built up in stones about two feet in width, laid in white cement, which relieves the pillars by regular lines of light.