Page:The Story of Mexico.djvu/42

10 ceremonies in Mexico, a wild, picturesque element, which is lacking in the church festivals of the Old World.

When the Conquistadores took possession of the New Spain in the name of their royal master, the Emperor Charles V., he was one of the most powerful of earthly monarchs. His son, Philip II., received the country as a part of his inheritance, along with realms which made him even greater than his father. But the successors of Philip II. knew not how to hold the possessions their fathers had won. Piece by piece their distant provinces were lost to them. Mexico, after two hundred years of neglect and mismanagement, shook herself free from Spanish rule; since the early part of this century she has called herself independent, with the exception of the two brief periods when the ambition of two men, differing widely from each other in their antecedents and aims, caused them to attempt the rôle of "Emperor of Mexico." Iturbide was the former of these; the latter, the ill-advised Maximilian. For the last twenty years, since the fall of Maximilian, Mexico has been a republic, with all the varying fortunes that attend a young institution struggling with inexperience and difficulty. A native population with an inheritance of superstition, prejudice, and oppression, mixed with a race whose traditions are all in favor of arbitrary government, supplemented by immigrants from every other nation who have come, often with lawless intent, seldom with disinterested motives, and never inspired by any feeling that could be called patriotism, must wait long for that