black Arabic; and Arabic figures in red are used to number the lines. The books begin with large blue head-pieces, ornamented with a delicate tracing of red and blue; small initials of the same description commencing the rare paragraphs, and every sentence beginning with a red letter; even the index is profusely decorated—all exhibiting the patience and skill of the monkish copyists; the whole being upon vellum, bound in parchment-covered pasteboards, bearing on the cover an emblazoned shield.
Among these illuminated manuscripts are the Colegio de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas, Escripta de Protestacion, dazzlingly illustrated in colors, and contained in parchment covers, fastened with thongs. A more beautifully decorated manuscript is the Angeles, Grandeza y Excelencia de los siete principes, a series of prayers and allegories on heaven and its inhabitants, with an octo-syllabic ode in triple measure and assonant rhyme; as also the Sermones, in Festis, executed in the sixteenth century.
Less ornate manuscripts of the religious class are furnished by the Obra of the Canon Conde y Oquiendos, in two volumes, on the apparition of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe; the treatise of Frey Hieroni Baptista on the canons regulating marriage; Amadei Apocalypsis, a folio collection of sermons, hymns, and allegories; and Fray J. de Schevelar, Questiones Sobre la Regla de San Francisco. The value of these books to the historian is merely in the illustrations they furnish of the religious devotion and bigotry of their age, and of the state of the arts at the same period.
But other manuscripts are of absolutely inestimable worth to the historical student. Of these, the principal ones are four large volumes of the Concilios Provinciales Mexicanos, which are the original records of the proceedings of the first three ecclesiastical councils of Mexico, held in the sixteenth century. These volumes contain petitions and communications on civil as well as religious affairs, and the decrees of the church by which secular affairs were regulated in Spanish North America, together with autographs and seals of sovereigns, church dignitaries, and other prominent men in civil offices.
The autographs contained in the manuscript collections are an attractive and intrinsically valuable feature. Among them are the signatures of Queen Juana, of Philip II., of his viceroy, of the first bishop of Mexico, and other prelates, with very many more historical personages, interesting from association, and curious as to caligraphy and rubricas. Among later autographs is that of the celebrated primate Lorenzana, and his five episcopal coadjutors.
Only less interesting are many specimens of the earliest American printing; such as a Zumarraga Doctrina Christiana of 1546, a Papal Bull of 1568, a Molina Vocabulario of Castilian and Mexican, printed in Mexico in 1571, and fifty or sixty other works printed in the sixteenth century.
It would be interesting to know through what strange vicissitudes of government, or gross carelessness of the priestly class in Mexico, this national treasure fell into the hands of a collector, and was finally offered for sale in Europe; and perhaps on this point Mr. Bancroft's forthcoming history of Mexico may enlighten us.
That division of che Bancroft Library bearing on the political history of Mexico and Central America is rich in early originals and copies of documents, many of the former having belonged to the Imperial Library, and the latter having been obtained from the archives of Spain and elsewhere. Zurita, Brebe y Sumaria Relacion, of 1554, in parchment binding, is a dissertation on the tribute system before and after the conquest, addressed to the king by this oédor. The Libro de Cabildo relates to the municipal acts of the city of Mexico from 1524 to 1529, and includes the names of the early settlers. Duran's Historia de las Indias de la Nueva España, in three tratados, treats of the ancient history and customs of the natives; as also much of the older Historia Apologetica and Historia de las Yndias of Las Casas. Another work during the sixteenth century on Nicaragua and Honduras, is a collection of Cerezeda's letters to the
