f gold and jewels: all the bells in the city
begin to ring: the carriages, which have been waiting ready harnessed
in court yards, pour out into the streets: the lumbering hackney
coaches go racing to the great square, striving to get the first fare
for luck: the Judases, which have been hanging all the morning out of
windows and across streets, are set light to as the first bell begins
to ring, and fizzing and popping burst all to pieces, and then are
thrown into a heap in the street, where a bonfire is made of them, and
the children join hands and dance round it. So Holy Week ends.

[Illustration: THE PORTER AND THE BAKER IN MEXICO. (From Models made by
Native Artists)]

The arrangement of the day in Mexico is this. Early in the morning your
servant knocks at your door, and brings in a little cup of coffee or
chocolate and a small roll, which _desayuno_--literally breakfast--you
discuss while dressing. Going down into the courtyard, you find your
horse waiting for you, and off you go for an hour or two's ride, and
back to a dejeuner-a-la-fourchette somewhere between ten and one
o'clock. Then you have seven or eight hours before dinner, so that a
good deal of work may be got into a day so divided. Things are managed
very differently in country places, but this is the fashion in the
capital among the higher class, that is, of course, the class of people
who put on dress-coats in the evening.

When we had been a day or two in Mexico, we took our first ride to
Tacubaya and Chapultepec. Mexican saddles and bridles were a novelty to
us, but when we come to describe our Mexican and his appurtenances it
will be time enough to speak of them.

The barricades in the streets constructed during the last revolution of
two or three weeks back had not yet been removed, but an opening at one
side allowed men and horses to get past. Carriages had to go round, an
easy matter in a city built as this is in squares like a chess-board.
The barricades mount two guns each, and as the streets are quite
straight they can sweep them in both directions, to the whole length of
their range. As in Turin, you can look backward and forward along the
straight streets from every part of the city, and see mountains at each
end. The suburbs of the city are quite as repulsive as our first
glimpse of them led us to expect; and, as far as one could judge by the
appearance of the half-caste inhabitants, it is not good to go there
alone after dark. Here is