military and civil service, and had developed a method of recording, in permanent form, not only the history of their country, but the daily transactions of business and government.
The work of their artisans in metal was described by their Spanish conquerors as exquisite in its artistic perfection and the few examples of it still remaining in European museums bear out the truth of this description.
The intellectual advance of the people is well demonstrated by the fact that their astronomical researches and development of the science of mathematics had enabled them to devise a calendar more accurate than that which Imperial Rome possessed in its proudest days.
While most of the literature which the native races had placed in permanent form was destroyed through the narrow superstition of their Spanish conquerors, a few examples have been preserved which indicate not only a high degree of mental refinement but a very elevated code of morals.
Any one who has read the translation of the poem of a Tezcocan king, and the letter of advice of an Aztec mother to her daughter, contained in the appendix of Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico," must have a high idea of the intellectual and moral qualities of a people capable of producing such expressions of elevated thought. And there appears to be no doubt that the civilization of the
