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the great temple of Huitzilopot.chli, in 1486, the prisoners, who for some years had been reserved for the purpose, were drawn from all quarters to the capital. They were ranged in files, forming a procession nearly two miles long. The ceremony consumed several days, and seventy thousand captives are said to have perished at the shrine of this terrible deity. But who can believe that so numerous a body would have suffered themselves to be led unresistingly like sheep to the slaughter? Or how could their remains, too great for consumption in the ordinary way, be disposed of without breeding a pestilence in the capital? Yet the event was of recent date, and is unequivocally attested by the best-informed historians. One fact may be considered certain it was customary to preserve the skulls of the sacrificed in buildings appropriated to the purpose. The companions of Cortés counted one hundred and thirty-six thousand in one of these edifices. Without attempting a precise calculation, therefore, it is safe to conclude that thousands were yearly offered up in the different cities of Anahuac on the bloody altars of the Mexican divinities.

Indeed, the great object of war with the Aztecs was quite as much to gather victims for their sacrifices as to extend their empire. Hence it was that an enemy was never slain in battle if there were a chance of taking him alive. To this circumstance the Spaniards repeatedly owed their preservation. When Montezuma was asked "why he had suffered the republic of Tlascala to maintain her independence on his borders," he replied, that she might furnish him with victims for his gods." As the supply began to fail the priests bellowed aloud for more and urged

on their superstitious sovereign by the denunciations of celestial wrath.

The influence of these practices on the Aztec character was as disastrous as might have been expected. Familiarity with the bloody rites of sacrifice steeled the heart against human sympathy and begat a thirst for carnage like that excited in the Romans by the exhibitions of the circus. The perpetual recurrence of ceremonies in which the people took part associated religion with their most intimate concerns and spread the gloom of superstition over the domestic hearth, until the character of the nation wore a grave, and even melancholy, aspect, which belongs to their descendants at the present day. The influence of the priesthood, of course, became unbounded. The sovereign thought himself honored by being permitted to assist in the services of the temple. Far from limiting the authority of the priests to spiritual matters, he often surrendered his opinion to theirs where they were least competent to give it. It was their opposition that prevented the final capitulation which would have saved the capital. The whole nation, from the peasant to the prince, bowed their necks to the worst kind of tyranny-that of a blind fanaticism. In reflecting on these revolting usages one finds it difficult to reconcile their existence with anything like a regular form of government or an advance in civilization, yet the Mexicans had many claims to the character of a civilized community.

Human sacrifice, however cruel, has nothing in it degrading to its victim; it may be rather said to ennoble him by devoting him. to the gods. Although so terrible with the Aztecs, it was sometimes voluntarily embraced by them as the most glorious death

and one that opened a sure passage into paradise. The Mexicans were not cannibals in the coarsest acceptation of the term. They did not feed on human flesh merely to gratify a brutish appetite, but in obedience to their religion. Their repasts were made of the victims whose blood had been poured out on the altar of sacrifice. This is a distinction worthy of notice. Still, cannibalism, under any form or whatever sanction, cannot but have a fatal influence

on

race, who would rescue it from the brutish superstitions that daily extended wider and wider with extent of empire. The debasing institutions of the Aztecs furnish the best apology for their conquest. It is true the conquerors brought along with them the Inquisition; but they also brought Christianity, whose benign radiance would still survive when the fierce flames of fanaticism should be extinguished, dispelling those dark forms of horror which had so long brooded over the fair regions of Anahuac.

SA

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.

ONWARD FLOWING.

AD is our youth, for it is ever going, Crumbling away beneath our very feet; Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing

In current unperceived because so fleet; Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing,

But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat;

the nation addicted to it. It suggests ideas so loathsome, so degrading to man, to his spiritual and immortal nature, that it is impossible the people who practise it should make any great progress in moral or intellectual culture. The Mexicans furnish no exception to this remark. The civilization which they possessed descended from the Toltecs a race who never stained their altars, still less their banquets, with the blood of man. All that deserved the name of science in Mexico came from this source, and the crumbling ruins of edifices attributed to them still extant in various parts of New Spain show a decided superiority in their architecture over that of the later races of Anahuac. It is true the Mexicans. made great proficiency in many of the social and mechanic arts, in that material culture -if I may so call it the natural growth And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft of increasing opulence, which ministers to the gratification of the senses. In purely intellectual progress they were behind the Tezcucans, whose wise sovereigns came into the abominable rites of their neighbors with reluctance and practised them on a much more moderate scale. In this state of things, it was beneficently ordered by Providence that the land should be delivered over to another

Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing,

And still-oh, still-their dying breath is sweet;

us

Of that which made our childhood sweeter
still,

And sweet is middle life, for it hath left us
A nearer good to cure an older ill,
And sweet are all things when we learn to
prize them,

Not for their sake, but His who grants them
or denies them.

AUBREY DE VERE.

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MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE.

YOUNG FELLOW, a tobacco-pedler by trade, was on his way from Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the deacon of the Shaker settlement, to the village of Parker's Falls, on Salmon River. He had a neat little cart painted green, with a box of cigars depicted on each side-panel, and an Indian chief holding a pipe and a golden tobacco stalk on the rear. The pedler drove a smart little mare and was a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but none the worse liked by the Yankees, who, as I have heard them say, would rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one. Especially was he beloved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut, whose favor he used to court by presents of the best smokingtobacco in his stock, knowing well that the country-lasses of New England are generally great performers on pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in the course of my story, the pedler was inquisitive and something of a tattler, always itching to hear the news and anxious to tell it again.

After an early breakfast at Morristown the tobacco-pedler-whose name was Dominicus Pike—had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece of woods without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little It being nearly seven o'clock, he was as eager to hold a morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper.

gray mare.

An opportunity seemed at hand when, after lighting a cigar with a sunglass, he looked up and perceived a man coming over the brow of the hill at the foot of which the pedler had stopped his green cart. Dominicus watched him as he descended, and noticed that he carried a bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick and travelled with a weary yet determined pace. He did not look as if he had started in the freshness of the morning, but had footed it all night, and meant to do the same all day.

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Good-morning, mister," said Dominicus when within speaking distance. "You go a pretty good jog. What's the latest news at Parker's Falls?"

The man pulled the broad brim of a gray hat over his eyes and answered rather sullenly that he did not come from Parker's Falls, which, as being the limit of his own day's journey, the pedler had naturally mentioned in his inquiry.

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Well, then," rejoined Dominicus Pike, "let's have the latest news where you did. come from. I'm not particular about Parker's Fall. Any place will answer.'

Being thus importuned, the traveller-who was as ill-looking a fellow as one would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woodsappeared to hesitate a little, as if he was either searching his memory for news or weighing the expediency of telling it. At last, mounting. on the step of the cart, he whispered in the ear of Dominicus, though he might have shouted aloud and no other mortal would have heard him.

"I do remember one little trifle of news,' said he. "Old Mr. Higginbotham of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard at eight o'clock last night by an Irishman and a nigger. They strung him up to the branch of a St. Michael's pear tree, where nobody would find him till the morning."

As soon as this horrible intelligence was communicated the stranger betook himself to his journey again with more speed than ever, not even turning his head when Dominicus invited him to smoke a Spanish cigar and relate all the particulars.

The pedler whistled to his mare and went up the hill, pondering on the doleful fate of Mr. Higginbotham, whom he had known in the way of trade, having sold him many a bunch of long nines and a great deal of pigtail, lady's twist and fig tobacco. He was rather astonished at the rapidity with which the news had spread. Kimballton was nearly sixty miles distant in a straight line; the murder had been perpetrated only at eight o'clock the preceding night; yet Dominicus had heard of it at seven in the morning, when, in all probability, poor Mr. Higginbotham's own family had but just discovered his corpse hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree. The stranger on foot must have worn seven-league boots, to travel at such a rate. "Ill news flies fast, they say," thought Dominicus Pike, "but this beats railroads. The fellow ought to be hired to go express with the President's message."

The difficulty was solved by supposing that the narrator had made a mistake of one day in the date of the occurrence; so that our friend did not hesitate to introduce the story at every tavern and country store along the road, expending a whole bunch of Spanish

wrappers among at least twenty horrified audiences. He found himself invariably the first bearer of the intelligence, and was so pestered with questions that he could not avoid filling up the outline till it became quite a respectable narrative. He met with one piece of corroborative evidence. Mr. Higginbotham was a trader, and a former clerk of his, to whom Dominicus related the facts, testified that the old gentleman was accustomed to return home through the orchard about nightfall with the money and valuable papers of the store in his pocket. The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr. Higginbotham's catastrophe, hinting what the pedler had discovered in his own dealings with him-that he was a crusty old fellow as close as a vice. His property would descend to a pretty niece who was now keeping school in Kimballton.

What with telling the news for the public good and driving bargains for his own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that he chose to put up at a tavern about five miles short of Parker's Falls. After supper, lighting one of his prime cigars, he seated himself in the bar-room and went through the story of the murder, which had grown so fast that it took him half an hour to tell. There were as many as twenty people in the room, nineteen of whom received it all for gospel. But the twentieth was an elderly farmer who had arrived on horseback a short time before and was now seated in a corner smoking a pipe. When the story was concluded, he rose up very deliberately, brought his chair right in front of Dominicus and stared him full in the face, puffing out the vilest tobacco-smoke the pedler had ever smelt.

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road and the pleasant summer dawn revived his spirits, and might have encouraged him to repeat the old story had there been anybody awake to hear it. But he met neither ox-team, light wagon, chaise, horseman nor foot-traveller till, just as he crossed Salmon River, a man came trudging down to the bridge with a bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick.

"Good-morning, mister," said the pedler, reining in his mare. "If you come from Kimballton or that neighborhood, maybe you can tell me the real fact about this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. Was the old fellow actually murdered two or three nights ago by an Irishman and a nigger?"

Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe at first that the stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing this sudden question the Ethi

Why, then it can't be a fact," exclained opian appeared to change his skin, its yellow Dominicus Pike.

"I guess he'd have mentioned if it was," said the old farmer; and he removed his chair back to the corner, leaving Dominicus quite down in the mouth.

Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedler had no heart to mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted himself with a glass of gin and water and went to bed, where all night long he dreamed of hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree.

To avoid the old farmer-whom he so detested that his suspension would have pleased him better than Mr. Higginbotham's-Dominicus rose in the gray of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart and trotted swiftly away toward Parker's Falls. The fresh breeze, the dewy

hue becoming a ghastly white, while, shaking and stammering, he thus replied:

"No, no! There was no colored man. It was an Irishman that hanged him, last night at eight o'clock. I came away at seven. His folks can't have looked for him in the orchard yet."

Scarcely had the yellow man spoken when he interrupted himself, and, though he seemned weary enough before, continued his journey at a pace which would have kept the pedler's

mare on a smart trot.

Dominicus stared after him in great perplexity. If the murder had not been committed till Tuesday night, who was the prophet that had foretold it in all its circumstances on Tuesday morning? If Mr. Higginbotham's corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how came the

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