mind, and, indeed, were too much like Theodore Hook, and would believe “forty, if you pleased.” They even went further, and were apt to believe not only what the missionaries taught them, but to cherish the memory of their old gods into the bargain. It was three centuries after the Conquest, that Mr. Bullock got the goddess Teoyaomiqui dug up in Mexico; and the old Indian remarked to him that it was true the Spaniards had given them three very good new gods, but it was rather hard to take away all their old ones. At any rate, the functions of the Inquisition were mostly confined to working the Index Expurgatorius, and suppressing knowledge generally, which they did with great industry until not long ago.
Here, then, are two causes of Mexican ignorance, and a third may be this; that Mexico was a colony to which the Spaniards generally came to make their fortunes, with a view of returning to their own land; and this state of things was unfavourable to the country as regards the progress of knowledge, as well as in other things.