the name of another, the injuries which have been inflicted on themselves. The poison with which an evil ruler taints the life-blood of the state, loses no portion of its virulence when the ruler dies. It festers, steadily and surely, in the veins of an innocent posterity, and though its effects be not made visible to some favoured generations, yet they are not less certain to appear, perhaps, when they are least expected.

The Mexican woman was condemned to die. There had been some talk, at one time, of sparing her life, in consequence of the various opinions with respect to the extent of her crime; but a thunder-storm, which took place just when the judges were most favourable to her, frightened them into a severer course towards one whose conduct was so manifestly displeasing to the gods. But the result of her crime was not to die with her; her punishment was not to take place until after the birth of her child, that the babe might be dedicated to the service of the priests, the severity of whose laws had destroyed its mother. Thus the rulers, whilst they punished her conduct with all the rigour of the law, acknowledged that the results of her crime might be beneficial to the community; whereby they clearly proved that the law should not have been made, since the law alone had made that deed a crime which, but for the law, had been not less praiseworthy than natural.

During the period which had to elapse before her execution could take place, she was permitted to live in her own house, although a strict and constant guard hindered any attempt at flight on her part, or any visits of condolence on the part of her friends. In this solitary condition, a twofold trouble, from within and without, filling her whole soul with anguish,—so tenacious of life, that she feared the dangers of her confinement, even though she knew that, those dangers surmounted, she must perish immediately by the hands of the executioner; yet so unacquainted with death, that she could not comprehend the magnitude of her punishment, but looked forward to it with a vague, indefinable dread, which, in her ignorance of what she dreaded, almost amounted to composure, so full of hope, newly sprung up within her, for the child which she was to bring forth; yet that hope speedily converted into grief that she could never behold the realisation of her wishes ;—and oftener still lost in astonishment at the wondrous rapidity with which some unknown power had compelled her to pass through so many changes. In this solitary condition she suffered such continual though varied agony, such rapid alternations from profound despair to partial hope (not less agonising than despair), from partial hope to momentary forgetfulness of her woes, and suddenly from that to a full, clear conviction of all its horrid realities;-as can scarcely be conceived in the mind, much less communicated by any process of description. Oh! there are pangs to which the oft-cited sufferings of ancient martyrs are but beds of roses! To yield the body up to torture is but to undergo pain, the very severity of which must proportionately shorten its duration; but, to suffer mentally, is to suffer in the deathless part; it is to feel the vulture gnawing at the heart-strings of a suffering and immortal Prometheus. The traveller over the desert finds his greatest suffering not so much

in the burning thirst which torments him by day, as in the dreams of cold water which, strange to say, his very thirst produces whenever sleep overcomes him. There is an inward fire which prompts man on to noblest actions, but becomes the torch of his own funeral pile, when the dense selfish ignorance of his fellows confines its operation to his own breast. If her brain had yielded beneath this accumulation of miseries, there had been some relief for her, even in the horrors of insanity; but to suffer until her exhausted frame was overcome by sleep, and wake only to endure fresh sufferings with refreshened faculties, were to be mad, and yet have sufficient consciousness to know and shudder at her own madness.

Her employment during this period of trial,-for she had her intervals of energy, and worked as though the full duration of life were assured to her, was the manufacture of feather pictures; an art in which the Mexicans in general, and she in particular, had attained great excellence. These pictures were the chief historical records of the Mexican people; for, being entirely ignorant of a written character, they used the feather where we employ the quill, and preserved the memory of great public events, not by hieroglyphics, as did the Egyptians, but by faithful representations of the scenes and actors in them. The process of making the picture was simple, but tedious, and required great nicety of touch. The plan of the picture was first traced on a paper made from the bark of the agave, after which the feathers of different birds were sewn on the paper, according to the colours required in the picture. The sweeper of the temple sat alone in her house, painting the history of her country. She was busy upon a conqueror, who had just passed, sword in hand, out of a world of which he had been the scourge. But yesterday he had waded through blood in pursuit of fame, yet now his reputation with posterity depended on a few fragile feathers, towards whose arrangement he could not contribute the lightest breath. One kind deed done in his lifetime to his poor historian, had sent him to posterity in brighter colours than all the wondrous actions of his long career. Surely there was a covert satire in the art, which even its followers did not rightly comprehend. To seize the strong pinions which should have borne their owners up to heaven, to sully their glowing plumage with the rude hand that used them for a selfish purpose ;-what was this but to imitate Mexican tyranny and Mexican priestcraft, which perverted to base uses all the noblest, purest feelings which God has given to man?

Before the upright figure of the conqueror, a captive was depicted kneeling, who, by his clasped hands and upturned countenance, seemed to be imploring mercy. The peculiar shape of the captive's head showed that he belonged to one of the Californian tribes, whose custom it was, and is, to flatten the head by compressing it between two boards, during the period of infancy. But, this one peculiarity excepted, the face was that of the Mexican woman herself. Whether she had purposely copied her own features, as she saw them reflected in a small obsidian mirror which hung upon the wall, or whether the sorrowful state of her mind had stamped its character upon her handiwork, may be matter of doubt; but, to all certainty, the captive was but a reflection of herself. Other pictures, which lay scattered about

the room, exhibited marks of a similar accident or a like design. Whether they depicted a banished prince, who stopped on the hill top to look back on the scenes of his youth,- —or a lover who gazed on the dead body of his mistress,-or a dying soldier, upraising himself on his arm, and looking round in mute agony on the bloody field,—or a poor husbandman whose fields had fallen a prey to a ruthless horde,-in each variety of sorrow she had given her own features to the mourner, as if to show that in her extremity of grief she had outgone them all, and comprised in her great agonies all the pangs which others had endured. There was a natural selfishness in her great grief, which not only would have monopolised all sympathy and compassion, but even loved to consider the woes of others as mere varieties of her pain. Thus, like the mad youth who sought his own shadow in each brook and well, did she gaze steadfastly into the tears of others for some reflection of herself.

She worked for some time in silence upon the conqueror and his captive, and then, placing the pictures on one side, took up another which was lying with its face on the floor. It depicted the temple in which she had been an attendant vestal; the walls were swept and garnished with flowers; the altar sent up its thick vapour; the serpents glared horribly from the cornices; night and solitude hung over the scene; and just where a moonbeam made the stone of sacrifice seem like burnished silver, there was a pool of blood, with a few locks of long dark hair. There are times when we can make sport of our own misery; when the mind, intoxicated with horror, drains anew the cup of wretchedness, and finds a momentary stimulus in the poisoned draught. At such a time, in such a mood, she had painted her own apotheosis. She gazed upon it vacantly, and a faint unmeaning smile played across her face, like a reflected light upon an inanimate object. But while she gazed, a sunbeam darted through the open window, and, falling on the bloody stain, diffused a glowing a light o'er all the neighbouring objects. It might have happened so a thousand times in bygone days, without her marvelling at aught save the beauty of the colour which it shed on all around; but, coming as it did at such a time, it seemed so her like a heaven-sent messenger, pointing out the way which she should go. Not all the forms and rules of law, not all the cruelty of judges, priests, and people, had done so much to destroy all doubt respecting her fast-approaching end, as this simple and ordinary occurrence. But whilst it robbed her of all hope, it yet substituted a feeling, which she could not have defined, but which had in it much that was consolatory. The sunbeam had indeed pointed to blood, but it had so diffused and softened the colour, as to liken it to that roseate tint which attends the setting of the sun.

Another month passed away, and the child had been born. It was a boy. The mother lay on her couch of rushes with her infant by her side; and the gossips who had been permitted to visit her, stood round in familiar conversation. Their talk was of the boy; how that there was in his face an indefinable something, common to no other Mexican children, although any one feature, taken by itself, bore some resemblance to the same feature in his mother's face. The mother lay quiet, as though she heard nothing, or scorned what she did hear;

but the child's large dark eyes were wide open, and fixed upon the talkers, as though his young soul were a banished angel, looking out from the windows of a new dwelling, upon a world which he did not comprehend. But while the gossips stood in a circle, and talked in low whispers, as fearing to disturb the mother, they did not perceive that one other person had stolen in, and stationed himself by the couch side. It was an old man, his head white with the snows of many winters, his eye beaming with yet youthful fire. But ever as he went along, and even as he stood now in the room amongst them, he cast continual glances behind him, as though he looked back at something which he had passed. The mother looked at him, and though she knew him not, said, as if by instinct, and through anxiety for her young child," Can you save us?"

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"I can do nothing for the living," said the old man ; I work for the dead, and through them for those who shall be hereafter; but, as I have some gift of prophecy, I can say that your boy, in after years, may, if he will, help himself by me. You are well-nigh numbered with the past; he, as an agent or a sufferer, has yet to be; I am a link between the two, snatching from the fast fleeting past, something for the fast coming future."

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The woman seemed scarcely astonished, or indeed grieved at his rejection of her request, but fell back on her couch, and said only, " It is a hard trial."

"It has been so before," said the old man," it will be so again, for the price must be paid." "Flowers from the mould; the gem from the mine; the sun's rising from the chambers of night; these are but types of man's condition, which have been, and shall be ever, for the price must be paid."

At least, you will protect my child?"

His lot will be cast in troubled times; let him thank Heaven for that; it is better to cope with known dangers, than to walk in ignorance of peril; the hare may shun the brink of the precipice, but the grass-covered pitfall will be a snare for the elk."

"Will he be triumphant, powerful, glorious?"

"Men gain, sooner or later, that for which they toil. The wages come always, though they are not always paid in pure gold. He will have his reward, but the greatest prize demands the greatest labour. All men work with equal diligence for some price, real or imaginary; the difference is only in the object for which they strive, and this depends upon man's own choice."

"And his father?"

"Leave him to God!"

The woman who stood near, but had hitherto heard nothing, caught this last question, and part of the answer to it; and, after many days, there went a rumour through the city, that a god was the father of the child.

The door opened, and some priests entered to demand their victim; the birth of her child had satisfied the selfishness of the law, and her hour was come. She rose, and kissed her child for the last time; he, glittering dresses of the priests, and They passed out and joined the long

poor innocent, smiled at the pointed at the sacrificial knife.

away.

procession which waited in the street; the gossips crowded round the door and gazed upon their old companion. The altar of the distant temple sent up a long line of wavering smoke, which seemed to beckon the victim onwards; they placed her on a litter, and moved slowly The old man went with them, seen by none, but noting, with calm, observant eye, the doings of the crowd. All the life of the city came out to see death made horrible; the blood ran cold to every heart, as though that subtle fluid had a magnetic life, and sympathised with that which was to be shed. The old and young, the strong and feeble, jostled towards the place of sacrifice; flags waved, and garlands fell upon the marching priests-plumes nodded in the air-faces looked down from window and house-top; but the gossips, as they strained their eyes up the long street, could mark nothing save the countenance of the victim, looking back upon the walls which hid her from her child. (To be continued in our next.)

GOVERNMENT OFFICERS' BUILDING SOCIETY.

Ir was not to be expected that our last article on this subject would give satisfaction either to the shareholders or the projectors of this undertaking. The prospect of great and immediate gain, was naturally so pleasing to the former, as to prepossess them against those who ventured to predict a total disappointment; whilst the reputation of the latter, both for sense and integrity, was so inseparably connected with the undertaking, as to make them regard the slightest opposition in the light of a personal insult. We can safely affirm, however, that we never doubted the honesty of the projectors; we gave them credit for the goodness of their intentions, though we doubted the justness of their views; and we believed that they would form a most respectable committee, though we were sure that if the cardinal virtues formed themselves into a provisional board, they could not make two and two equal to five; much less render the Government Officers' Building Society a beneficial, or even a harmless, institution. In truth, respectability is not the only ingredient requisite to form a committee, and the shareholders have been much to blame in taking shares upon the mere guarantee of names and reputations, instead of testing those calculations, whose unsoundness would neutralise all the efforts of the most respectable men. What we did, every shareholder might have done for himself; but it was stated at their last meeting, and no one was bold enough to deny that statement, that the majority of the shares had been taken solely because the trustees were considered to be respectable men. This hasty mode of proceeding was as unjust to the committee, as to the individual shareholder. But we will pass on to other considerations.

As we desired that our statements, if incorrect, might be speedily contradicted, we took care that the chairman, the solicitor, and one of the committee, should be provided with copies of the "Student," at