at least approximate to the truth. To illustrate: there can be no doubt that much concerning the Aztec civilization has been greatly exaggerated by the old Spanish writers, and for obvious reasons. It was manifestly to the advantage of some, both priests and adventurers, to magnify the power and consequence of the people conquered, and the cities demolished by them, knowing full well that tales of mighty realms, with countless man-eaters and fabulous riches, would soonest rouse the zeal and cupidity of the Spaniards, and best secure to them both honors and supplies. Gathered from the lips of illiterate soldiers little prone to diminish the glory of their achievements in the narration, or from the manuscripts of native historians whose patriotic statements regarding rival states no longer in existence could with difficulty be disproved, these accounts passed into the hands of credulous writers of fertile imagination, who drank in with avidity the marvels that were told them, and wrote them down with superhuman discrimination—with a discrimination which made every so-called fact tally with the writings of the Fathers. These writers possessed in an eminent degree the faculty called by latter-day scholars the imaginative in history-writing. Whatever was told them that was contrary to tradition was certainly erroneous, a snare of the devil; if any facts were wanting in the direction pointed out by doctrines or dogmas, it was their righteous duty to fill them in. Thus it was in certain instances. But to the truth of the greater part of these relations, testimony is borne by the unanimity of the authors, though this is partly owing to their copying each from the writings of the others, and, more conclusively, by the architectural remains which survived the attacks of the iconoclastic conquerors, and the golden and bejeweled ornaments of such exquisite workmanship as to equal if not surpass anything of the kind in Europe, which ornaments were sent to Spain as proofs of the richness of the country. At this distance of time it
