Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 1.djvu/102

76 custom, however, principally obtains in families of the middle class—if middle class there be: it does not prevail extensively in fashionable households; neither is it seen among the poor—for the satisfactory reason, that the one filthy floor of a dirty hut, generally serves at once for husband and wife, sons and daughters, chattels and animals.

Could the Mexicans be brought into habits of intercourse with other nations, immense advantages would accrue to them in every respect. But the geographical situation of the country is against them; it is separated from the United States by a sterile and savage region, while both mountains and seas, in other directions, conspire to isolate Mexico from other lands. These unfavourable circumstances would have little effect upon more energetic minds; but the semi-Spaniards yield at once to their position: they seem to think that their best protection lies in falling back upon their own indolence, and their truest wisdom in suspecting all the world beside. As is usually the case, the national character asserts itself, more or less, in individuals and in families.

Their almost incessant civil wars and rebellions, also, have had a most withering effect