CHAPTER V.

The City of Mexico-The Palace-Cathedral-Wealth of the ChurchMasses, a Productive System of Revenue-The Streets and Buildings of Mexico-Curious Position of Stables-Inundations of the City.

THE city of Mexico is said to be the finest built city on the American Continent. In some respects it certainly is so. In the principal streets the houses are all constructed according to the strictest architectural rules. The foundations of the city were laid, and the first buildings were erected by Cortes, who did everything well which he attempted, from building a house or writing a couplet to conquering an empire. Many of the finest buildings in Mexico are still owned by his descendants. The public square is said to be unsurpassed by any in the world; it contains some twelve or fifteen acres paved with stone. The cathedral covers one entire side, the palace another; the western side is occupied by a row of very high and substantial houses, the second stories of which project into the street the width of the pavement; the lower stories are occupied by the principal retail merchants of the city. The most of these houses were built by Cortes, who, with his characteristic sagacity and an avarice which equally characterized him in the latter part of his life, selected the best portion of the city for himself.

The President's Palace, formerly the palace of the viceroys, is an immense building of three stories high, about five hundred feet in length, and three hundred and fifty wide; it stands on the site of the palace of Montezuma. It is dif

ficult to conceive of so much stone and mortar being put together in a less tasteful and imposing shape; it has much more the appearance of a cotton factory or a penitentiary, than what it really is; the windows are small and a parapet wall runs the whole length of the building, with nothing to relieve the monotony of its appearance except some very indifferent ornamental work in the centre; there are no doors in the front either of the second or third stories-nothing but disproportionately small windows, and too many of them; the three doors, and there are only three in the lower story, are destitute of all architectural beauty or ornament. Only a very small part of this palace is appropriated to the residence of the President; all the public offices are here, including those of the heads of the different departments; ministers of war, foreign relations, finance and justice, the public treasury, &c., &c. The halls of the house of deputies and of the senate are also in the same building, and last and least, the botanic garden. After passing through all sorts of filth and dirt on the basement story you come to a dark narrow passage which conducts you to a massive door, which, when you have succeeded in opening, you enter an apartment enclosed with high walls on every side but open at the top, and certainly not exceeding eighty feet square, and this is the botanic garden of the palace of Mexico; a few shrubs and plants and the celebrated manita-tree, are all that it contains. I have rarely in my life seen a more gloomy and desolate looking place. It is much more like a prison than a garden. A decrepit, palsied old man, said to be more than a hundred years old, is the superintendent of the establishment; no one could have been selected more in keeping with the general dilapidation and dreariness of this melancholy affair.

But the cathedral, which occupies the site of the great

idol temple of Montezuma, offers a striking contrast. It is five hundred feet long by four hundred and twenty wide. It would be superfluous to add another to the many descriptions of this famous building which have already been published. Like all the other churches in Mexico, it is built in the Gothic style. The walls, of several feet thickness, are made of unhewn stone and lime. Upon entering it, one is apt to recall the wild fictions of the Arabian Nights; it. seems as if the wealth of empires was collected there. The clergy in Mexico do not, for obvious reasons, desire that their wealth should be made known to its full extent; they are, therefore, not disposed to give very full information upon the subject, or to exhibit the gold and silver vessels, vases, precious stones, and other forms of wealth; quite enough is exhibited to strike the beholder with wonder. The first object that presents itself on entering the cathedral is the altar, near the centre of the building; it is made of highly-wrought and highly-polished silver, and covered with a profusion of ornaments of pure gold. On each side of this altar runs a balustrade, enclosing a space about eight feet wide and eighty or a hundred feet long. The balusters are about four feet high, and four inches thick in the largest part; the handrail from six to eight inches wide. Upon the top of this handrail, at the distance of six or eight feet apart, are human images, beautifully wrought, and about two feet high. All of these, the balustrade, handrail, and images, are made of a compound of gold, silver, and copper-more valuable than silver. I was told that an offer had been made to take this balustrade, and replace it with another of exactly the same size and workmanship of pure silver, and to give half a million of dollars besides. There is much more of the same balustrade in other parts of the church; I should think, in all of it, not less than three hundred feet.

As you walk through the building, on either side there are different apartments, all filled, from the floor to the ceiling, with paintings, statues, vases, huge candlesticks, waiters, and a thousand other articles, made of gold or silver. This, too, is only the every day display of articles of least value; the more costly are stored away in chests and closets. What must it be when all these are brought out, with the immense quantities of precious stones which the church is known to possess? And this is only one of the churches of the city of Mexico, where there are between sixty and eighty others, and some of them possessing little less wealth than the cathedral; and it must also be remembered, that all the other large cities, such as Puebla, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Durango, San Louis, Potosi, have each a proportionate number of equally gorgeous establishments. It would be the wildest and most random conjecture to attempt an estimate of the amount of the precious metals thus withdrawn from the useful purposes of the currency of the world, and wasted in these barbaric ornaments, as incompatible with good taste as they are with the humility which was the most striking feature in the character of the founder of our religion, whose chosen instruments were the lowly and humble, and who himself regarded as the highest evidence of his divine mission, the fact that "to the poor the gospel was preached." I do not doubt but there is enough of the precious metals in the different churches of Mexico to relieve sensibly the pressure upon the currency of the world, which has resulted from the diminished production of the mines, and the increased quantity which has been appropriated to purposes of luxury, and to pay the cost of much more tasteful decorations in architecture and statuary, made of mahogany and marble.

But the immense wealth which is thus collected in the

churches, is not by any means all, or even the larger portion, of the wealth of the Mexican church and clergy. They own very many of the finest houses in Mexico and other cities (the rents of which must be enormous), besides valuable real estates all over the Republic. Almost every person leaves a bequest in his will for masses for his soul, which constitute an incumbrance upon the estate, and thus nearly all the estates of the small proprietors are mortgaged to the church. The property held by the church in mortmain is estimated at fifty millions.

Mexico is, I believe, the only country where the church property remains in its untouched entirety. Some small amount has been recently realized from the sale of the estates of the banished Jesuits; but, with that exception, no President, however hard pressed (and there is no day in the year that they are not hard pressed), has ever dared to encroach upon that which is regarded consecrated property, with the exception of Gomez Farrias, who, in 1834, proposed to the legislative chambers to confiscate all the church property, and the measure would, no doubt, have been adopted, but for a revolution which overthrew the administration.

But it is impossible that such a state of things can last always. I have heard intelligent men express the opinion, that one-fourth of the property of the country is in the hands of the priesthood; and, instead of diminishing, is continually increasing. As a means of raising money, I would not give the single institution of the Catholic religion of masses and indulgences for the benefit of the souls of the dead, for the power of taxation possessed by any government. No tax-gatherer is required to collect it; its payment is enforced by all the strongest and best feelings of the human heart. All religions and superstitions have their