Conquest of Mexico
by Dupaix and Alzate. (Antiquités Mexicaines, tom. i. Exp. 1, pp. 1 5-20; tom. iii. Exp. 1, PI. 33.) A recent investigation has been made by order of the Mexican government, the report of which differs, in some of its details, from the preceding.—Revista Mexicana, tom. i. mem. 5.
Page 394 (8).—Ante, vol. i. p. 102.
Page 394 (9).—It is impossible to look at Waldeck's finished drawings of buildings, where Time seems scarcely to have set its mark on the nicely chiselled stone, and the clear tints are hardly defaced by a weather-stain, without regarding the artist's work as a restoration; a picture, true, it may be, of those buildings in the day of their glory, but not of their decay.—Cogolludo, who saw them in the middle of the seventeenth century, speaks of them with admiration, as works of "accomplished architects," of whom history has preserved no tradition. Historia de Yucatan (Madrid, 1688), lib. 4, cap. 2.
Page 395 (1).—In the original text is a description of some of these ruins, especially of those of Mitla and Palenque. It would have had novelty at the time in which it was written, since the only accounts of these buildings were in the colossal publications of Lord Kingsborough, and in the Antiquités Mexicaines, not very accessible to most readers. But it is unnecessary to repeat descriptions, now familiar to every one, and so much better executed than they can be by me, in the spirited pages of Stephens.
Page 395 (2).—See, in particular, two terra-cotta busts with helmets, found in Oaxaca, which might well pass for Greek, both in the style of the heads, and the casques that cover them.—Antiquités Mexicaines, tom. iii. Exp. 2, PI. 36.
Page 395 (3).—Dupaix speaks of these tools, as made of pure copper. But doubtless there was some alloy mixed with it, as was practised by the Aztecs and Egyptians; otherwise, their edges must have been easily turned by the hard substances on which they were employed.
Page 395 (4).—Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii. pp. 246-254.
Page 395 (5).—Ante, vol. i. p. 80.
Page 396 (1).—Waldeck, Atlas Pittoresque, p. 73. The fortress of Xochicalco was also coloured with a red paint (Antiquités Mexicaines, tom. i. p. 20); and a cement of the same colour covered the Toltec pyramid at Teotihuacan, according to Mr. Bullock.—Six Months in Mexico, vol. ii. p. 143.
Page 396 (2).—Description de I'Egypte, Antiq., tom. ii. cap. 9, sec. 4. The huge image of the Sphinx was originally coloured red. (Clarke's Travels, vol. v. p. 202.) Indeed, many of the edifices, as well as statues, of ancient Greece, also, still exhibit traces of having been painted.
Page 396 (3).—The various causes of the stationary condition of art in Egypt, for so many ages, are clearly exposed by the Duke di Serradifalco, in his Antichita della Sicilia* (Palermo, 1834, tom. ii. pp. 33, 34); a work in which the author, while illustrating the antiquities of a little island, has thrown a flood of light on the arts and literary culture of ancient Greece.
Page 396 (4).—"The ideal is not always the beautiful," as Winckelmann truly says, referring to the Egyptian figures. (Histoire de I'Art chez les Anciens, liv. 4, chap. 2, trad. Fr.) It is not impossible, however, that the portraits mentioned in the text may be copies from life. Some of the rude tribes of America distorted their infants' heads into forms quite as fantastic, and Garcilaso de la Vega speaks of a nation discovered by the Spaniards in Florida, with a formation apparently not unlike that of the Palenque. "They had heads incredibly long, and very slender in the upper part, a form obtained artificially by bandaging the babies from the day of birth until they reach the age of nine or ten years."—La Florida (Madrid, 1723), p. 190.464
