g-poet;
Clavijero, the historian, and others. Other libraries are maintained by
various museums and professions.

[Footnote 30: Also the Aztec sacrificial stone.]

There are some sixty or more Catholic churches in the city, and
numerous other buildings formerly of ecclesiastical purpose. Most of
these were built during the colonial _regime_, the Spanish Renaissance
being the prevailing style. Several Protestant places of worship
exist--religious observance being absolutely free--and these include
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and others. The
religious census, made in 1900, of the whole of the Republic gave
thirteen and a half million persons declaring themselves as Catholics,
about 52,000 Protestants, 1,500 Mormons, 2,000 Buddhists, and about
19,000 who made no statement of religious faith.

There are some twelve hospitals, asylums, and kindred establishments
for the afflicted, in the capital or Federal districts, as public
charities, and eight of a private nature, including the benevolent
societies and hospitals of the various foreign colonies, as the
Americans, Spanish, and others. Among the semi-charitable or benevolent
institutions must be mentioned the famous Monte de Piedad, or National
Pawnshop, which, as its name implies, carries on the business of such
for the benefit of poor people, who thus avoid the usurious rates of
interest of private pawnbrokers. This worthy institution was founded in
1775, by Terreros, Count of Regla, of mining fame, and during a single
month of 1907 the establishment and its branches loaned money to the
people against articles to the amount of nearly half a million _pesos_.
Of penal establishments the Penitentiary, opened in 1900, at a cost of
about two and a half million _pesos_, ranks first. It has a strict
scientific _regime_ for its inmates, with more than seven hundred cells
for convicts and others.

Some of the public buildings are good types of structure of the
colonial period. Among these is the Palacio Nacional, spacious and
massive, but monotonous and plain in its outward appearance. Here the
Government business is transacted, and this edifice occupies a whole
side of the Zocalo, or Plaza de Armas, with a long arcade of the
characteristic _portales_, or arches, facing the square, above the
footpath. It is of historic interest, having sheltered nearly all
Mexican rulers from Montezuma onwards, Cortes, the viceroys, Iturbide,
Maximilian, and all the Pr