work Mr. Stephens bears willing testimony | inquiries, and then said unhesitatingly, "Go call to the kindheartedness and friendly disposition a coach, and let a coach be called !" The majorof the Padres. Although debased by super-domo ascended by a flight of stone steps outside stition, and with many of the worst features to the belfry of the church, whither we followed of popery in their full extent, still the reader tone of voice that reminded us of a Mussulman him; and, turning around with a movement and perceives how important are the benefits in a minaret calling the faithful to prayers, he which the local clergy, scattered through the called for a coach. The roof of the church, and wilds of Central America and Mexico, confer, of the whole pile of buildings connected, was of not only on the inhabitants, but upon the stone cemented, firm and strong as a pavement. stranger and the traveller. Wherever a The sun beat intensely upon it, and for several cura's house was to be found, there welcome, single Indian trotting through the woods toward minutes all was still. At length we saw a protection, and kindness were to be found the hacienda, then two together, and in a quarter from them, and from them only, were to be of an hour there were twenty or thirty. These obtained any, even the slightest glimmerings were the horses; the coaches were yet growing of information regarding the antiquities and on the trees. Six Indians were selected for each the objects of interest in the country; and coach, who, with a few minutes' use of the low as the entire region is sunk in the scale machete, cut a bundle of poles, which they of civilisation, it is abundantly clear that it is brought up to the corridor to manufacture into the diffusion of Christianity, imperfect and ground two poles about as thick as a man's coaches. This was done, first, by laying on the vitiated though it be, which prevents its wrist, ten feet long and three feet apart. These descending into absolute barbarism. were fastened by cross-sticks tied with strings of unspun hemp, about two feet from each end; grass hammocks were secured between the poles, bows bent over them and covered with light placed our ponchas at the head for pillows, matting, and the coaches were made. We crawled inside, and lay down. The Indians took off their little cotton shirts covering the breast, and tied them around their petates as hatbands. Four of them raised up each coach, and placed the end of the poles on little cushions on their domo and his wife, and, feet first, descended the shoulders. We bade farewell to the majorsteps and set off on a trot.'-vol. ii., pp. 405, 406.

After making some antiquarian purchases at the village, negotiating for more, and rejecting the project of buying the palace and repeopling the old city, chiefly on the ground that a stranger must marry a daughter of the soil before he can purchase land, Mr. Stephens set out on a long journey by sea and land to Uxmal. At Merida he found a most influential friend in the person of Don Simon Peon, the proprietor of the ruins at Uxmal, with whom he had formed a casual acquaintance at an hotel in New York. The territorial possessions of this gentleman's family are most princely: their haciendas are scattered throughout the entire distance between Merida and Uxmal. There is not a single stream or spring throughout the region; and water is, consequently, one of the most valuable possessions in the country. As the only supply for the year is obtained during the rainy season, from April to October, stone tanks of enormous dimensions are constructed and kept up at great expense to contain it at each of these country palaces; and the Indians, in return for the privilege of using the water, become bound to the owner by a sort of feudal tie. These lordly haciendas are of stone, magnificently built, and equal in size to Blenheim or Stowe, each having a church attached to it.

As the

travellers were friends of the family, and escorted by a household servant, each of them in succession, with its major-domo and army of servants, was placed under their

control.

At the moment of quitting one of them, being fatigued with our ride, the escorting servant suggested to the major-domo, "llamar un coché" -in English "call a coach," which the latter offered to do if we wished it. We made a few

Arrived at Uxmal, Mr. Catherwood resumed his labours, but his health, which had suffered greatly from his exertions at Copan and Palenque, entirely gave way on the second his friend, and resolved at once to leave the day; and Mr. Stephens became alarmed for ruins. The single day, however, had been well employed:

The first object that arrests the eye on emerging from the forest is the "Casa del Enano," I entered; and from it I counted sixteen elevaor House of the Dwarf. It was the first building tions, with broken walls and mounds of stones, and vast, magnificent edifices, which at that distance seemed untouched by time and defying ruin. I stood in the doorway when the sun went down, throwing from the buildings a prodigious breadth of shadow, darkening the terraces on which they stood, and presenting a scene strange enough for a work of enchantment.

elevation on which it stands is built up solid The Casa del Enano is 68 feet long. The from the plain, entirely artificial. Its form is not pyramidal, but oblong and rounding, being 240 feet long at the base, and 120 broad, and it of square stones. Perhaps the high ruined strucis protected all around, to the very top, by a wall tures at Palenque, which we have called pyramidal, and which were so ruined that we could not make them out exactly, were originally of the same shape. On the east side of the struc

and desolate doors, it is hard to believe that he sees before him the work of a race in whose epitaph, as written by historians, they are called ignorant of art, and said to have perished in the rudeness of savage life. If it stood at this day on its grand artificial terrace in Hyde Park or the Garden of the Tuileries, it would form a new order, I do not say equalling, but not unworthy to stand side by side with the remains of Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman art.'—vol. ii., pp. 429, 430.

One of the peculiarities of these ruins was in the lintels of the doorways; they had all been of wood, and most of them were still in their places. They were heavy beams eight or nine feet long; and on one, which had fallen from its place, was a line of characters carved or stamped, which, although almost obliterated, appeared similar to those of Copan and Palenque.

6

There are,' says Mr. Stephens, 'at Uxmal no "idols," as at Čopan; not a single stuccoed figure or carved tablet, as at Palenque. Except this beam of hieroglyphics, though searching earnestly, we did not discover any one absolute point of resemblance; and the wanton machete of an Indian may destroy the only link that can connect them together.'-vol. ii., p. 433.

ture is a broad range of stone steps between eight and nine inches high, and so steep that great care is necessary in ascending and descending: of these we counted a hundred and one in their places. Nine were wanting at the top, and perhaps twenty were covered with rubbish at the bottom. At the summit of the steps is a stone platform four feet and a half wide, running along the rear of the building. There is no door in the centre, but at each end a door opens into an apartment eighteen feet long and nine | wide, and between the two is a third apartment of the same width, and thirty-four feet long. The whole building is of stone; inside, the walls are of polished smoothness; outside, up to the height of the door, the stones are plain and square; above this line there is a rich cornice or moulding, and from this to the top of the building all the sides are covered with rich and elaborate sculptured ornaments, forming a sort of arabesque. The style and character of these ornaments were entirely different from those of any we had ever seen before, either in that country or any other: they bore no resemblance whatever to those of Copan or Palenque, and were quite as unique and peculiar. The designs were strange and incomprehensible, very elaborate, sometimes grotesque, but often simple, tasteful, and beautiful. Among the intelligible subjects are squares and diamonds, with busts of human beings, heads of leopards, and compositions of leaves and flowers, and the ornaments known everywhere as grecques. The Having concluded his account of these ruins, ornaments, which succeed each other, are all the last which he explored, Mr. Stephens dedifferent; the whole form an extraordinary mass of richness and complexity, and the effect is both votes a separate chapter to the important quesgrand and curious. And the construction of tions, when and by whom were these cities these ornaments is not less peculiar and striking built?' He treats the subject ably; and the than the general effect. There were no tablets result to which he comes is, that there are no or single stones, each representing separately sufficient grounds for the belief in the great and by itself an entire subject; but every orna- antiquity which has been ascribed to them. ment or combination is made up of separate On the contrary, he is convinced that the whole stones, on each of which part of the subject was of the buildings which he examined were concarved, and which was then set in its place in the wall. Each stone, by itself, was an unmeanstructed by the people who occupied the couning fractional part; but, placed by the side of try at the time of the Spanish conquest, and others, helped to make a whole, which without probably even in the case of the oldest of them it would be incomplete. Perhaps it may, with all, Quirigua, not very many centuries prior to propriety, be called a species of sculptured that event. He founds this opinion, first, on mosaic.'--vol. ii., pp. 420-422. the appearance of the ruins; and secondly, on historical accounts; and numerous passages which he gives from Herrera and Bernal Diaz de Castillo appear to us completely to establish the fact, that magnificent stone buildings-palaces and temples-exactly similar to those which he has described, were spread over the whole country at the time of the conquest.

The Casa del Gobernado is the grandest in position, the most stately in architecture and proportion, and the most perfect in preservation of all the structures remaining at Uxmal:

'It stands on three ranges of terraces, the lowest 600 feet long, and the united height of the three 35 feet; the whole of cut stone. The palace itself measures 320 feet, and stands with all its walls erect, and almost as perfect as when deserted by its inhabitants. The whole building is of stone, plain up to the moulding that runs along the tops of the doorway, and above filled with the same rich, strange, and elaborate sculpture. There is no rudeness or barbarity in the design or proportions: on the contrary, the whole wears an air of architectural symmetry and grandeur; and as the stranger ascends the steps, and casts a bewildered eye along its open

In an early part of his work (vol. i., p. 97) the author adverts, but, as our reader has seen, with no severity of censure, to Dr. Robertson's erroneous estimate of the progress which had been made in the arts of civilized life by the old inhabitants of America. that time,' he says, 'distrust was perhaps the safer side for the historian.' This excuse is scarcely sufficient. That Dr. Robertson was wise to receive with extreme caution the exag

At

gerated boastings of the Spanish historians as | volumes rich in important and original matter. to their adventures, their conquests, and their The political details, for instance, from which spoils, cannot be doubted; but it does seem we have systematically abstained, would in marvellous to us that he could have studied, as themselves be sufficient to render the work one we know he did, the contemporary historians, of high interest and permanent value. and not have had more correct ideas on the subject forced upon him. Diaz de Castillo's 'True History of the Conquest of Mexico,' were it the only book extant on the subject, would amply suffice to prove the extent, solidity, and magnificence of the buildings.

We well know the extreme cuticular tenuity which characterizes our Transatlantic brethren; and that the occasional freedom of our remarks upon their literature, among other subjects, has placed us somewhat low in their good graces. We are not aware of having ever under-rated their merits but certainly we have not been Now it will be recollected,' says Mr. Ste-disposed, nor are we now, to mistake the prophens, that Bernal Diaz wrote to do justice to mise of excellence which many branches of their himself and others of the "true conquerors," his literature display, for the achieved perfection companions in arms, whose fame had been obscured by other historians, not actors and eyewitnesses; all his references to buildings are incidental; he never expected to be cited as authority upon the antiquities of the country. The pettiest skirmish with the natives was nearer his heart than all the edifices of lime and stone which he saw; and it is precisely on that account that his testimony is the more valuable.'-vol. ii., p. 452.

There is great weight in this argument: the case being one of those in which the value of what are termed 'indirect evidences' becomes

so apparent.

Mr. Stephens devotes only a few pages to his homeward journey. He and Mr. Catherwood embarked on board a Spanish brig at Sisal, with the intention of proceeding, in the first instance, to the Havannah; but they were soon becalmed. The sun was unendurably hot-the sea of a glassy stillness-provisions and water ran short-and the sharks which surrounded the vessel, and which at first they looked at, and angled for, and eat with complacency, became by degrees very disagreeable companions, so much did they appear as if waiting for their prey. For sixteen days this fearful stillness continued. The captain said that the vessel was enchanted; and the sailors, half in earnest, exclaimed that it was owing to the heretics. At length a breeze sprang up; but the captain, who had no chronometer on board, being too noble-minded a Spaniard ever to use one, had lost his reckoning, and believed that he was in the middle of the Gulf stream, and two or three hundred miles past his port. In this state of things it was to the unspeakable delight of the two travellers that an American brig hove in sight, took them on board, and landed them safely at New York on the 31st July, 1840, after an absence of ten months.

to which they lay claim; nor, as we conceive, will their indignant complaints of ill-treatment tend to establish that claim. It will be much better sustained by their giving to the public a few more such volumes as these. Let our good friends of the New World send out halfa-dozen such travellers as Mr. Stephens, and we predict that the records of their wanderings, discoveries, and adventures, will do more to elevate the literary character of America than the angry philippics of all the reviews and newspapers throughout the Union, backed though they may be by an entire phalanx of servile echoers in England.

ART. III.—Biography and Poetical Remains of the late Miss Margaret Miller Davidson. By Washington Irving. Philadelphia, 1841. ABOUT twelve years ago we gave our readers an account of Lucretia Davidson, an American girl, whose precocious genius and early death excited in us, and, as we afterwards found, in the public, a strong and painful interest.

We have now to show another phenomenon of the same class, and that other is the sister of the former. We hardly know at first sight whether the recurrence in the same family of such a prodigy ought to increase or to diminish our wonder; but at all events it is so remarkable, and the two cases are so closely connected, both in the facts they present and the feelings they excite, that some notice of the second seems an indispensable supplement to our article on the first-to which we request our readers to refer, for there is scarcely a line of it which, with the change of Margaret for Lucretia, would not be equally We close this book with regret. From the applicable to our present purpose: almost the first page to the last, the animation, the cha-only difference is, that Margaret died at the age racteristic energy, and the buoyant spirit of the of fifteen years and eight months---one year author remain undiminished. Our extracts and three months less than that of her sister; might have been thrice trebled, and yet left the Lucretia having been born in September, 1808,

'Margaret evinced fragility of constitution from her very birth. Her sister Lucretia, whose brief poetical career has been so celebrated in literary history, was her early and fond attendant, and some of her most popular lays were composed with the infant sporting in her arms. She used to gaze upon her little sister with intense delight, and, remarking the uncommon brightness and beauty of her eyes, would exclaim, "She mustshe will be a poet!"'—p. 12.

This to our taste is somewhat over-fine.

and dying in August, 1825-Margaret, born posity and inflation, of which we dare say he in March, 1823, died in November, 1838. is unconscious, but of which we hope we shall The parents of these children and of several be-as old and sincere friends-excused for others, of whom nothing remarkable is told, apprising him. He proceeds in the same tone. were Dr. Oliver Davidson and Margaret (Miller) his wife, of whom little more is related than that they seem to have been in more straitened circumstances than the doctorial title would have led us to expect. We, indeed, wonder and a little complain that Mr. Washington Irving, in introducing this second prodigy, did not see that some additional curiosity would naturally be excited about the parents and the other children-not mere idle gossiping curiosity, but a rational desire to trace if possible the seeds of the precocity which he considers as so extraordinary—to know whether either of the We admit that it is quite natural that Mr. Irving parents had shown any similar dispositions, should feel a warm enthusiasm about these inand, above all, whether such a disposition interesting young creatures, with whose family them might not have tutored the infant minds he was early acquainted, and one of whom he of the girls into premature activity. We are told that though Lucretia died when Margaret was only two and a half years old, her example inculcated by the tender recollection and admiration of the rest of the family-had a great influence on the young sister; but, as we stated in the former article, the genius of the elder seems, if there be no exaggeration in the statement, to have acted not merely spontaneously but secretly, and as if she rather dreaded reprehension than hoped for approbation.

had himself seen; but we think that strangers would be more effectually led to partake his sentiments if, in telling a story which in itself borders on the marvellous, the biographer had seen the advantage of employing a more simple style of narration, as well as of exercising a more chastened judgment as to the intrinsic value of several of these poetical effusions, of sic. But having ventured on this slight critiwhich the real value is, we fear, wholly extrincism, we willingly add a cordial acknowledg ment of the kindly spirit and amiable manner in which Mr. Irving has executed the double duties of friend and editor.

Margaret was born on the 26th March, 1823, at the family residence on Lake Cham plain, in the village of Plattsburg'-so says Mr. Irving, meaning, we presume, that she In 1833, about a year after Mr. Irving's rewas born in her parents' residence in the village turn from Europe, he was told, while at New of Plattsburg, on the shores of Lake Champlain. York, that Mrs. Davidson was in that city, and We notice this phrase in limine, because we redesirous of consulting him about a new He lost no time gret to find throughout his share of the volume, edition of Lucretia's works. that thestyleof Mr. Washington Irving, which we in waiting on her, and found that her appearalways admired and have often praised for its ance corresponded with the interesting idea ease and simplicity, seems to have taken, pergiven of her in her daughter's biography-she haps from his entourage,* a turn towards pom-lows in a sick chair, but with lingerings of was feeble and emaciated-propped by pilThe biographies hint that the circumstances of grace and beauty in her form and features,. the family were such that Lucretia was necessarily and her eyes still beamed with intelligence and diverted from her literary pursuits by household cares. sensibility. Indeed, from these and other hints Our republican friends on the other side of the scattered through both the biographies, we are Atlantic are very shy of such homely details, and Mr. Irving does not violate the ethereal dignity of poor inclined to suspect that it was from their motherMargaret by even an allusion of that kind, but it is that these interesting girls inherited that fragilidoing injustice to her fame to omit so remarkable a ty of constitution and probably that excitability clog on her intellectual progress as she herself indi- of mind, which seem to have condemned the parent to a long life of suffering and the children to the happier destiny of an early grave.

cates.

'Come! and behold how I improve

In dusting-cleaning-sweeping;
And I will hear with patient ear
Your lectures on housekeeping.'
To Mrs. H

p 121.

+ Miss Sedgwick, for instance, who has recently published a biography of the elder sister, prefaces a few lines of lively doggrel which Lucretia had written at school, by saying that she ' does not insert them so much for their poetical merit as for the playful spirit which beams through them, and which seems like sunbeams smiling on a cataract !'

While Mr. Irving was conversing with the mother on the subject of her daughter's works, he observed a little girl, apparently not more than eleven years of age, but of striking intellectual beauty, moving quietly about her; occasionally arranging a pillow, and at the same time listening earnestly to their conversation. This was Margaret: on her leaving the room

'the mother spoke of her as having evinced the I will try to fill her place-teach me to be like same early poetical talent that had distinguished her." her sister,' and, as evidence, showed Mr. Irving several copies of verses remarkable for such a Alas! she needed no teaching-she was child. He found also that she had 'nearly the but too like her-in life and in death. Her same moral and physical constitution, and was mother endeavoured to repress the activity of prone to the same feverish excitement of the her intellect-she was in fact kept back; but mind and kindling of the imagination which before she could write, or even read, her lanhad acted so powerfully on the fragile frame of guage was inspired with what is called poether sister Lucretia.' Mr. Irving cautioned the y: She would talk of bright warm sunmother against 'fostering the poetic vein,' and shine,' of 'cooling showers,' of the pale cold advised such studies and pursuits as would moon,' and would note the picturesque beaustrengthen her judgment, calm her sensibilities, ties of nature, and discriminate the passing and enlarge her common sense. Mrs. Davidson effects of the weather on the surrounding was fully aware of the importance of this ad-landscape.

་

vice, but foresaw great difficulty in following. 'A bright starlight night would seem to awakit, having to contend not only with the child's en a mysterious rapture in her infant bosom; natural disposition, but with the additional and one of her early expressions in speaking of excitement produced in the mind of this sensitive the stars was, " that they shone like the eyes of little being by the example of, and an intense angels."'—p. 15. enthusiasm about, her departed sister.

ligious impressions-which were all through Her mother cannot tell at what age her reher life strong and enthusiastic-were first imbibed: they seemed interwoven with her and affection towards the Creator entered invery existence, and a sentiment of gratitude

Three years elapsed before Mr. Irving again saw her the interval had rapidly developed the powers of her mind, and heightened the loveliness of her person-but his fears for her health were verified-'the soul,' he emphatically says, 'was wearing out the body-the fragile delicacy of her form, the hectic bloom of to her earliest emotions of delight at the wonher cheek, the almost unearthly lustre of her ders and beauties of creation. eye, convinced him that she was not long for At six years old she was so far advanced this world.' He never saw her more but in literature and intelligence as to be the about three years after that interview a number companion of her mother when confined to of manuscripts were placed in his hands as all her room by protracted illness. She read that was left of her! These manuscripts were not only well, but elegantly-her love of accompanied by copious memoranda of this reading amounted to a passion, and her intelinteresting creature, furnished by the mother, ligence surpassed belief; strangers viewed and which form the groundwork, and indeed with astonishment a child little more than much of the superstructure, of Mr. Irving's six years old reading with enthusiastic debiographical notice. light Thomson's Seasons'-the 'Pleasures of The death of Lucretia, which happened, as Hope'-Cowper's Task'-the writings of we have stated, when Margaret was not quite Milton, Byron, and Scott-and marking two years and a half old, made yet a great with taste and discrimination the passages impression on her, which showed itself in feel- which struck her. But the sacred writings ings and language of extraordinary precocity. were her daily study-not hurried over as a A few months after Lucretia's decease--when, task, but she would spend an hour or two in of course, Margaret was about three-a visiter commenting with her mother on the contents to her mother seeing her come into the room of the chapter she had read. with a light elastic step, for which she was All this at the age of 'little more than six,' always remarked, said, 'That child never or even if it were seven, is certainly surpriswalks;' and then turning to her, 'Margaret, ing; but when we recollect that it is vouchwhere are you flying now? To heaven !' ed, as far as we see, only by maternal enthushe said, pointing up with her finger, 'to meet siasm, it creates no very serious wonder, and my sister Lucretia, when I get my new wings.' 'Your new wings?-when will you get them?' -'Soon-O very soon-and then I shall fly !'

*

These pure and pious minds were in no danger from Byron. Lucretia wrote a short copy of verses, his poetical beauties and his moral blemishes. We on him, discriminating with much severity between do not recollect that Margaret alludes directly to Byron, but some lines on Cowper (p. 277,) as good perhaps as any she wrote, express her admiration of the Christian poet in a tone that sufficiently indicates what her feelings must have been towards the opposite school.