Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/376

362 gold, silver, and copper coins and medals, struck in Mexico since the Spanish conquest, with their dies, all in perfect preservation are there, and thousands of old Roman coins, with most of the coins and medals issued in Europe within the last five centuries. There are many specimens of the coins and medals issued by Maximilian. Among the former is one in silver, representing the Virgin of Guadaloupe on one side, and Maximilian on the other, and another which represents Maximilian and Carlotta on the obverse, and the Virgin on the reverse. Maximilian was exceedingly vain of his repulsive face, and placed his likeness on every thing which could be made to bear it. "With all its faults and short comings, the National school of Art and Design in Mexico is infinitely superior to anything similar on the continent; and it will be long before we shall equal it in the United States. Some years since the students planned and erected a magnificent structure for this School outside the San Cosme Gate in the direction of Chapultepec, near the Agricultural College, but during the siege by Porfirio Diaz, the Imperialists occupied it, and his cannon riddled it into a cullender, and it is now a complete ruin. I rode out there one day, and saw where the Californians under Col. Green crawled up in a ditch to within a hundred yards of the walls, and with their Henry rifles shot down the Imperialist gunners at their posts, silencing their cannon, while the batteries of the Republicans sent their shot crashing through and through the structure, until it became a perfect wreck and untenable.

The College of Mines or Mining College was one of the noblest educational institutions of Mexico in its design, and it had been famous for half a century, before,