“In two places, moreover, this first manuscript shows an extension of the drawings from one page over to the neighboring one, namely, from 4 to 5 and from 30 to 31. This is not found on the second manuscript. From continuity of contents, if we are allowed to assume it from similarity of pictures and partition, we may suppose this manuscript to be divided into chapters in the following manner: pp. 1-2 (then follows the unfinished and disconnected page 3), 4-17, 18-23 (here follows p. 24, without pictures), 25-28, 29-33, 34-35, 36-41.

“Compared with this, manuscript B rarely shows a tripartition, but on pp. 65-68 and 51-57 a bipartition by one line. A further difference is this, that A out of 45 pages has only one (p. 24) without pictures, while B out of 29 pages has 9 without pictures (51, 52, 59, 63, 64, 70, 71, 72, 73), nothing but writing being found on them. Page 74, differing from all others, forms the closing tableau of the whole; and, similarly, p. 60, the last of the front, shows a peculiar character. A closer connection of contents may be suspected between pp. 46-50, 53-58, 61-62, 65-68.

“The two manuscripts also differ greatly in the employment of the sign, or rather signs, differing little from each other, which resemble a representation of the human eye and consist of two curves, one opening above and the other below and joined at their right and left ends. These signs occur only on 5 out of the 45 pages of Codex A (1, 2, 24, 31, 43), while they occur on 16 pages out of the 29 of Codex B (48, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 70, 71, 72, 73).

“I believe that the differences above mentioned, to which others will probably be added, are sufficient to justify my hypothesis of the original independence of the two codices. Whoever looks over the whole series of leaves without preconception cannot escape the feeling, on passing from leaf 45 to leaf 46, that something different begins here.

“Thus the copy of Aglio has made it possible to venture a hypothesis bordering on certainty concerning the original form of this monument. Five years after Aglio had finished the copying there appeared, in 1831, the first volumes of Lord Kingsborough’s Mexican Antiquities. The work in the trade cost 175l.; the expense of publication had been over 30,000l. The eighth and ninth volumes followed only in 1848. The ponderous work has undoubtedly great value from its many illustrations of old monuments of Central American art and literature, which in great part had never been published. As regards the Spanish and English text, it is of much less value. We may pass in silence over the notes added by Lord Kingsborough himself, in which he tries to give support to his favorite hypothesis that the Jews were the first settlers of America. Whoever wishes to obtain exact information concerning the character and contents of the whole work and dreads the labor of lifting and opening the volumes, may find a comprehensive review of it in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 17, pp. 90-124, 8vo, London, January, 1832, where he will also find a lucid exposition of the history of the literature of Mexican antiquarian studies.

“In the middle of the third volume of the Mexican Antiquities (side numbers are here absent) there is found the title ‘Fac simile of an original Mexican painting preserved in the Royal Library at Dresden, 74 pages.’ These 74 pages are here arranged on 27 leaves in the following manner:

Codex A.Codex B.
1, 2, 3,46, 47, 48,
4, 5, 6,49, 50, 51,
7, 8, 9,52, 53, 54,
10, 11,55, 56, 57,
12, 13, 14,58, 59, 60,
15, 16, 17,61, 62, 63,
18, 19,64, 65, 66,
20,67, 68, 69,
21, 22, 23,70, 71, 72,
24, 25,73, 74.
26, 27, 28,
29, 30, 31,
32, 33, 34,
35, 36, 37,
38, 39, 40,
41, 42, 43,
44, 45.

“On the whole, therefore, each leaf in Kingsborough comprises three pages of our manuscript. Why the publisher joined only two pages in the case of 10 and 11, 18 and 19, 24 and 25, and left page 20 entirely separate, I cannot say; but when he failed to add 46 to 44 and 45 it was due to the fact that here there is indication of a different manuscript.

“On January 27, 1832, Lord Kingsborough wrote a letter from Mitchellstown, near Cork, in Ireland, to Fr. Ad. Ebert, then head librarian at Dresden, thanking him again for the permission to have the manuscript copied and telling him that he had ordered his publisher in London to send to the Royal Public Library at Dresden one of the ten copies of the work in folio. The original of the letter is in Ebert’s manuscript correspondence in the Dresden library.

“On April 27, 1832, when the copy had not yet arrived at Dresden, an anonymous writer, in No. 101 of the Leipziger Zeitung, gave a notice of this donation, being unfortunate enough to confound Humboldt’s copy with that of Lord Kingsborough, not having seen the work himself. Ebert, in the Dresden Anzeiger, May 5, made an angry rejoinder to this “hasty and obtrusive notice.” Böttiger, whom we mentioned above and who till then was a close friend of Ebert, on May 12, in the last named journal, defended the anonymous writer (who perhaps was himself) in an extremely violent tone. Ebert’s replies in the same journal became more and more ferocious, till Böttiger, in an article of May 25 (No. 150 of the same journal), broke off the dispute at this point. Thus the great bibliographer and the great archæologist were made enemies for a long time by means of our codex.