An Indian, going to Mexico one morning in the sixteenth century, saw a female form descending from the sky. He was frightened; but the female told him that she was the Virgin Mary, come down to be the patron of the Mexican Indians, and ordered him to announce to the bishop that a church must be built in the mountain where she met him. The Indian flew to the bishop, but the prelate drove him away. The next day he met the Virgin on the same spot, and she appointed a day to convince the sceptical ecclesiastic. She bid him go to the summit of the mountain, where he should find the rock covered with roses for the first time since the Creation. He carried the roses in his apron to the bishop, when, lo! he found that on his apron was stamped a figure of the Virgin in a cloak of velvet spangled with stars of gold! Her proof was irresistible, and the church was built. The original portrait is still displayed there, in a golden frame studded with precious stones, with the motto, Non fecit taliter omni nationi. (He hath not so done to every nation; or, more significantly, to any other nation.) Copies of the miraculous picture, of more or less costliness, are to be found in almost every house, and all have the full homage of saintship. The Church of the Virgin, though not so large as the Cathedral, is of a finer style, and nearly as rich; the balustrade is pure silver, and all the candelabra, &c., are of the precious metals.
The idleness and the low class of life from which the majority of the monks and friars are taken, make celibacy especially dangerous to the community. The higher orders of the priesthood are comparatively decorous; but many of them have these suspicious appendages to a priest’s household, which are called “house-keepers,” with a proportionate share of those equally suspicious appendages, which are popularly called “nephews and nieces,” the whole system being one which furnishes a large portion of the gossip of Mexican society. But on those topics we have no wish to dwell.
Whether the American invasion will succeed in reaching Mexico, or in obtaining Upper California, or in breaking up the Federation, are matters still in the future. The disruption of the Federation seems to have been already, and spontaneously begun; Yucatan is said to have demanded independence; and the northern provinces bordering on the United States will, in all probability, soon make the same demand. It is obvious that the present Mexican territory is too large for the varying, distracted, and feeble government which Mexico has exhibited for the last quarter of a century—a territory seven times the size of France, or perhaps ten times that size, can be governed by a central capital only so long as the population continues scanty, powerless, and poor. But if Mexico had a population proportionate to France, and there is no reason for doubting its capacity of supporting such a population, the capital would govern a territory containing little less than three hundred millions of men; an obvious impossibility, where those men were active, opulent, intelligent, and engaged in traffic with the world. The example of the Chinese population is not a contrary case. There the empire was old, the throne almost sacred, the imperial power supported by a large military establishment, the character of the people timid, and the country in a state of mental stagnation. Yet, even for China, great changes may be at hand.
But the whole subject is to be looked on in a more comprehensive point of view. There is a general shaking of nations. The Turk, the Egyptian, the African, and the Chinese, have all experienced an impulse within late years, which has powerfully influenced their whole system. That impulse is now going westward. The immense regions beyond the Atlantic are now commencing the second stage of that existence, of which their discovery by Europe was the first. The language, the habits and history, the political feelings of England, are becoming familiar to them. They have begun their national education in the great school of self-government, with England for their teacher; and however tardy may be the pupilage, or however severe the events which turn the theory into example, we have strong faith in the conception, that all things will finally work together for good, and that a spirit of regeneration is already sent forth on its mighty mission to the New World as to the Old, to the “bond as to the free;” to those whom misgovernment has enfeebled, and superstition has debased, as to those who, possessing the original advantages of civilisation and religion, have struggled their difficult way to increasing knowledge, truth, and freedom, and whose progress has alike conferred on them the power, and laid upon them the duty, of being the moral leaders of Mankind.
A SUMMER DAY.
By Thomas Aird.
Morning.
Dear little Isle of ours! your very clouds,
Ranged in the east and battlemented black,
White flock of zenith, or, with stormy glory,
Tumbling tumultuous o’er the western hills,
Lend power and beauty to your pictured face,
Relieved and deepened in its light and shade,
Varied of dale and mountain, pleasing still
Through all the seasons, as they come and go,—
Blue airy Summer, Autumn brown and grave,
Gnarled sapless Winter, and clear glinting Spring.
Mine be the cottage, large enough for use,
Yet fully occupied, and cheerful thus.
Desolate he who, with his means abridged,
And wants reduced, yet pride of property
Still unimpaired, dwells in a narrow flank;
Of his ancestral house, gloomily vast
Beyond his need,—dwells with the faded ghost
Of former greatness. There the bellied spider,
That works in cool and silent palaces,
Has halls his own. The labyrinthine rooms
Seem haunted all. Mysterious laden airs
Move the dim tapestries drearily. And shapes
Spectral at hollow midnight beckoning glide
Down the far corridors, and faint away.
Up with the summer sun! Earlier at times,
And see gray brindled dawn come up before him;
There’s natural health, there’s moral healing in
The hour so naked clear, so dewy cool!
But oft I wish a chamber in the black
Castle of Indolence, far in, where spark
Of prying light ne’er comes, nor sound of cock
Is heard, nor the long howl of houseless cur,
Nor clock, nor shrill-winged gnat, nor buzzing fly
That, by the snoring member undeterred,
Aye settles on your nose’s tickled tip
Tormentingly. Deep in that charmèd rest
Laid, I could sleep the weary world away,
Months at a time—so listless fancy thinks.