the middle ages, who love and fight in fantastic castles on the banks of the Rhine, or ladies and knights of the times of Orgaz and Villamediana; those novelists, who disdain the slightest reference in their works, to the banquets, dress, and customs of our own society; who long to give aristocratic flavor to their novels, by picturing Parisian scenes in Mexico and sketching social classes, which they have seen through the pages of Arrsenne Houssaye, Emile Zola, Henri Bourger, or Paison de Terrail; and our poets, who ever speak of nightingales and larks, gazelles and jacinths, without ever venturing to give place, in their doleful ditties, to the cuitlacoche, nor the zentzontl, nor the cocomitl, nor the yoloxochitl.”
“As the Arabs have their Hegira, the Christians their era, and the Russians their calendar without the Gregorian correction, so Chaverito1 has his personal era and chronology. The eolithic or neolithic ages signify nought to him, nor the jurassic nor the cretaceous periods; he counts and divides his periods in a manner peculiar to himself and comprehensible to us, the ignoramuses in geology, archæology, and palæontology.