growing to fair and full proportions, and our larger and smaller cities alike enjoying real genius, expressed in real forms of art.
That there is a desire for this, the feeble attempts of girls' boarding-schools and the sometimes successful struggles of young men, bear abundant evidence. Could these girls have competent teachers, and these boys fair educational opportunities, there would be as grand an accession to our artistic force, as our musical conservatories, under the best professors of that art, have added to our musical culture. By as much as a permanent picture surpasses a burst of song, by so much will the school of painting excel that of music. Who will start a conservatory of art?
The Aztec does not neglect music. If you will come to the plaza on one of these superb moonlight nights, when it seems as if the purity of the atmosphere brought you nigh the silver orb (perhaps it is the silvery soil that does it), and the air is full of tremulous lustre. The brown Indian band take their stand on the raised round centre of the square. There is not a white, hardly a mixed blood among them. Pure Aztecs these. They begin. Did you ever hear more delicate notes, more softly rendered? The combinations are equally rich. They are not mere melody, but masterly intervolutions of harmony. Their touch is soft, and swift, and strong. They catch the soul of the music, and bring it palpitating before you. The moon seems to shed a directer ray. No Venetian night on the Plaza of San Marco ever excels these torrid temperate perfections of moonlight and melody. The pieces are not familiar, and, I reckon, are original. If they are, then the twofold gift of utterance and composition is theirs. The band would have won loudest applause if it had appeared at the Jubilee. Let Gilmore remember them in his Centennial Reunion, when all the world shall gather in Philadelphia, and he shall bring forth his bands and choruses for their delight. The Aztec band of Mexico will make French and German, English and Yankee, look to their laurels.
The schools of the city are in some respects superior to those of America. A large number of these are kept up by the Free-
