Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/309

Rh : the Peruvian even doubted of the soundness of a law which was occasionally profaned by those who gloried in professing it, and who fancied themselves inspired by it in all their enterprizes. The Peruvian gave to the God of clemency the worship to which he was bound by his chains, but preserved at the same time an affection for his ancient idols. He concealed them beneath the most sacred representations of the Catholic religion, to direct his prayers to them, while the Spaniard thought that the efficacy of these prayers would ensure him a ready access to heaven. Happily those times of calamity and bloodshed ceased; and, peace being restored to this highly-favoured soil, the respectable prelates, the fathers of the Peruvian church, were seen to dire6l their stepson every side, not like the thunderbolt which carries terror in its train, but like the lovely light of the morning, dissipating the dark shades of ignorance, instilling confidence into every breast, and presenting the august spirit of religion beneath the semblance of the charity which constitutes its essence.

Plate XIV. introduces to the notice of the reader a virgin, or priestess, of the sun. However the modern Indians of Peru may have been obliged, by their conquerors, to abandon the rites of the idolatrous worship of their ancestors, they have not failed to perpetuate, by succeeding generations, the remembrance of their ancient forms and ceremonies. The tume