Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 1.djvu/38

 were more true to the natural forms of objects. . ." For, even though these manuscripts are probably not the work of Aztec artists in the narrowest sense of the word, they are at any rate Mexican, and were produced at a period when Aztec power was at its height. Moreover, in this passage, Prescott is using the term Aztec as equivalent to Mexican. Most surprising is his endorsement of Torquemada's views on the low artistic value of Mexican sculpture, followed by the comment that only when the old beliefs lost their hold upon the native mind "it opened to the influences of a purer taste; and, after the Conquest, the Mexicans furnished many examples of correct, and some of beautiful, portraiture." Yet in his defence it may be pleaded that only in the last few years has the indigenous art of America been rated at its proper value.

Prescott's appendix, dealing with the analogies borne by Mexican culture to that of the Old World, and its origin, cannot be discussed fully within the limits of an introduction. The question is broader, and far more complicated, than even he realised. Even to-day there hardly exists the material upon which a conclusive judgment could be founded. But there is no doubt as to the merit of the appendix. Since the discovery of Mexico the most fantastic theories have been spun in the attempt to relate the culture revealed by the Conquest with that of the Old World. Prescott's method is truly Herodotean. He refers practically to all such theories propounded up to his day, applying to them a cool and fatal judgment. Since his time, many works and treatises have been written in the same strain, backed by the wider material which the growth of Anthropological and Oriental studies has rendered available. It is perhaps noteworthy that nearly all such works have been produced by authors whose special knowledge is confined to some branch of Old-World archæology, but not by those who have studied in detail the archæology of America. In any case the result to-day may be summed in the very words used by Prescott in the two paragraphs which conclude this portion of his great work, with the rider that the contribution of Asia to America cannot yet be proved to be more than a racial element arriving at a time so remote that it possessed no culture worthy of the name to bring with it.

In conclusion I should like to add a personal note of appreciation regarding the illustrations which constitute so notable a feature of this edition. Regarded as artistic productions, their merit is evident