that fade in the azure distance; the magnificent avenues of stately trees, converging from every point toward the walls of the great city? The city itself, a mass of towers and spires and glowing, richly tinted domes; the scores of villages embowered in leafage, and nestling within shadow of the foothills; the sparkle of water on the distant lake; the grand stone arches of gray aqueducts crossing the country from the heights beyond; the wonderful encircling line of mountains, deep with amethystine shadow, that stand like guardians of the happy valley's peace; and farthest away, but most omnipresent of all, the eternal majesty of Popocatapetl and Iztaccihuatl, cleaving the blue and silent air, lifting their radiant white summits like luminous clouds up to the very gates of heaven, awful in sublimity, as if belonging to the supernatural world, yet tempered with the tenderness of earthly beauty,—who can paint the surpassing glory of this entrancing scene for eyes which have not been touched by itself with the anointing chrism of vision? If no more of beauty than this one view can give were added to one's inner consciousness, the journey to Mexico would be fully requited.
