it which they possess. In this capacity, the following gentlemen belong to it: Señor Melesio Vázquez, Archdeacon of the Church of Tulancingo, Señor José María Oliver y Casares, residing in Campeche, and Señor Audormaro Molina, who resides in Merida.
In truth, the Mexican Academy has been able to do but little in behalf of our language and literature, but it can present in excuse the complete lack of all those means without which it is impossible to achieve the ends for which it was established.
The indispensable funds are lacking to the body and the time necessary for long and serious studies is lacking to the members. Those who compose it do not live entirely by literary pursuits; some give their chief attention to their professional occupations, others to the direction of affairs—personal or other—others, finally, to the discharge of high offices in State or Church.
Academies are, usually, liberally subsidized by their governments; they count upon their own sources of support, and those who compose them are suitably remunerated. The Mexican Academy lacks everything; there only remains to it the will to do what its scanty resources permit. Neither the poverty in which it lives, nor the little time at its disposition of its members and correspondents for carrying out the labors already begun, discourages it. Constant in its purposes, it will continue its labors, slow, it is true, but never interrupted; it will continue, by preference, to collect materials for the Diccionario de Provincialismos, and in a day, perhaps not very distant, will thus make known how the Castilian language is spoken in Mexico.