he religious structures and history of the prehistoric,
semi-civilised peoples of Mexico, or indeed of Spanish-America, whether
North or South. The pyramids and temples, which the Toltecs and the
Aztecs and the Incas built, have something grand and broad underlying
their main idea, the idea of being able to get _on_ their temples
rather than _in_ them. There is ever a source of inspiration in being
upon the point of an eminence, to commune with Providence, rather than
being immured within some gloomy walls, with toppling spires overhead.
The spirit ever tries to get _out_, to ascend, and is exalted in
accordance with its altitude. Did not Moses at Sinai bring forth the
enduring Decalogue from the summit of a great natural pyramid, rather
than from the gloomy interior of a temple? The exceedingly numerous
pyramids throughout ancient Mexico seem to attest some exalted idea of
a natural religion, which found outlet and habitation in the great
Teocallis.

Man, semi-civilised or modern, ever strives to commune with a God, an
unseen Being. Is it not nobler and more inspiring to gaze towards the
setting sun with solitude around us? An environment of Nature, the
nearest approach to the "unknown God" which exists, subtly attracts us
as the handiwork of a power unknown. Well may the altar lights and
emblems, and the oppressive enclosure of temples, be more and more
rejected by the thinking mind, as the dark ages of religion leave us
and true reverential knowledge unfolds. We might almost be tempted to
say that the cathedrals of Mexico are not a philosophical exchange for
its Teocallis, nor that the stake and axe of the Inquisition were much
advance upon the sacrificial stone of the Aztec war-god! The frenzied
priest who cut open the breast of the human sacrificial victim with an
obsidian knife, and tore out the palpitating heart to cast it before
his fanciful gods, does not present a picture of such refined cruelty
as that of civilised European man, the Inquisitors in long black
cloaks, calmly sitting by whilst their victims were slowly roasted to
death at the stake because they would not change their faith, or for
other equally reasonless cause. There is, and ever will be, something
peculiarly sinister and abominable about the recollection of the
Inquisition and its operations, under the sky of the New World. And to
the philosophical observer, who pins his thoughts to no mere creed of
whatever designation, the fact seems palpabl