VII.
THE AZTEC PRINCESS.
"Speaking marble."—Byron.
CHAPTER I.
In common with many of our countrymen, my attention has been powerfully drawn to the subject of American antiquities, ever since the publication of the wonderful discoveries made by Stephens and Norman Among the ruins of Uxmal and Palenque.
Yucatan and Chiapas have always spoken to my imagination more forcibly than Egypt or Babylon; and in my early dreams of ambition I aspired to emulate the fame of Champollion le Jeune, and transmit my name to posterity on the same page with that of the decipherer of the hieroglyphics on the pyramids of Ghizeh.
The fame of warriors and statesmen is transient and mean, when compared to that of those literary colossii whose herculean labors have turned back upon itself the tide of oblivion, snatched the scythe from the hands of Death, and, reversing the duties of the fabled Charon, are now busily engaged in ferrying back again across the Styx the shades of the illustrious dead, and landing them securely upon the shores of true immortality, the ever-living Present! Even the laurels of the poet and orator, the historian and philosopher, wither, and
"Pale their ineffectual fires"
in the presence of that superiority—truly godlike in its attributes—which, with one wave of its matchless wand, conjures up whole realms, reconstructs majestic empires, peoples desolate wastes—voiceless but yesterday, save with the shrill cry of the bittern—and, contemplating the midnight darkness shrouding Thebes and Nineveh, cries aloud, "Let there be light!" and suddenly Thotmes starts from his tomb, the dumb pyramids become vocal, Nimroud wakes from his sleep of four thousand years, and, springing upon his battle-horse, once more leads forth his armies to conquest and glory. The unfamiliar air learns to repeat accents, forgotten ere the foundations of Troy were laid, and resounds once more with the echoes of a tongue in which old Menes wooed his bride, long before Noah was commanded to build the Ark, or the first rainbow smiled upon the cloud.
All honor, then, to the shades of Young and Champollion, Lepsius and De Lacy, Figeac and Layard. Alexander and Napoleon conquered kingdoms, but they were ruled by the living. On the contrary, the heroes I have mentioned vanquished mighty realms, governed alone by the