the Mexicans excelled perhaps more than in any other, the
goldsmith's work. Where are the calendars of solid gold and silver--as
big as great wheels, and covered with hieroglyphics, and the cups and
collars, the golden birds, beasts, and fishes? The Spaniards who saw
them record how admirable their workmanship was, and they were good
judges of such matters. Benvenuto Cellini saw some of these things, and
was filled with admiration. They have all gone to the melting-pot
centuries ago! How important the goldsmith's trade was accounted in old
times is shown by a strange Aztec law. It was no ordinary offence to
steal gold and silver. Criminals convicted of this offence were not
treated as common thieves, but were kept till the time when the
goldsmiths celebrated their annual festival, and were then solemnly
sacrificed to their god Xipe;[19] the priests flaying their bodies,
cooking and eating them, and walking about dressed in their skins, a
ceremony which was called _tlacaxipehualiztli_, "the man-flaying."

Museums of Mexican antiquities are so much alike, that, in general, one
description will do for all of them. Mr. Uhde's Museum at Heidelberg is
a far finer one than that at Mexico, except as regards the
picture-writings. I was astonished at the enormous quantity of stone
idols, delicately worked trinkets in various hard stones and even in
obsidian, terra-cotta tobacco-pipes, figures, and astronomical
calendars, &c., displayed there.

Mr. Christy's collection is richer than any other in small sculptured
figures from Central America. It contains a squatting female figure in
hard brown lava, like the one in black basalt which is drawn in
Humboldt's _Vues des Cordilleres_, and there called (I cannot imagine
why) an Aztec priestess. Above all, it contains what I believe to be
the three finest specimens of Aztec decorative art which exist in the
world. One of these is the knife of which the figure at page 101 gives
some faint idea, the other two being a wooden mask overlaid with
mosaic, and a human skull decorated in the same manner, of which a more
particular description will be found in the Appendix. There are two
kinds of Aztec articles in Mr. Christy's collection which I did not
observe either at Mexico or Heidelberg. These are bronze needles,
resembling our packing-needles, and little cast bronze bells, called
in Aztec _yotl_, not unlike small horse-bells made in England at the
present day; these are figured in the trib