Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/366

352 and cakes of all kinds drove a thriving trade. It is said that pocket-picking is one of the chief features of the annual festival of Guadaloupe, and many of my friends have been robbed there in the most adroit manner; but our party did not suffer from any such depredations, and one of us to my certain knowledge stood in no serious danger of heavy loss at that time.

The whole festival reminded me of the annual pilgrimage of the common people to the pagan shrines of India, in some of its features; nevertheless, there was an evident earnestness and religious conviction in the manner of all the worshipers, which must entitle them to the respect of even the greatest cavilers and scoffers at their form of faith. The great mass of the believers in every faith in the world, are honest and earnest in their convictions, and these simple worshipers at the shrine of the Virgin of Guadaloupe, are entitled to the foremost rank in that list. If simple faith shall justify and make men whole, they, surely, have less to fear and more to hope for in the future life, than most of us who claim to hold more enlightened opinions on religious subjects.

Coming home, we passed the old palace of the Inquisition, an institution which nourished in all its purity and vigor in the Vice Royalty of Mexico in its earlier days. A grand, gloomy old pile of architecture, with reminiscences of untold horrors and cruelties, indescribable, clinging to every stone in its massive walls. It was confiscated and put to better uses long ago. Opposite it is the ruinous old church of San Domingo, and by its side, the little plaza in which the French under the Empire, used to murder their prisoners of war at day-break; the wall is still pitted with the bullet-marks