lding is tarnished, the buildings about her Court are
falling to decay, while the bleak hill which her temple crowns looks
tenfold more uninviting than if it never had been occupied. When I
entered this neglected temple of a neglected image, an old,
superannuated priest was saying mass, and three or four old crones were
kneeling before her altar. Such are the effects that followed the
revolution of Iguala. Not only was her hated rival of Guadalupe
elevated from her long obscurity to be the national saint, but the
animosity against this dilapidated image of Remedies was carried to
that extreme of cruelty that, when the Spaniards were expelled from
Mexico, the passports of the "Lady of Remedios" were made out, and she
was ordered to leave the country. Poor thing!

The porter's eye glistened at the now unwonted sight of a silver
dollar, and he soon had me through the most secret recesses of the
sanctuary. The only things I saw worthy of admiration were some
pictures, made from down or the feathers of the humming-bird, by which
a richness of color was imparted to the pictures that could not be
obtained from paints.

At last we came to the back of the great altar, and the curtain of
damask silk being drawn up by a little string, we saw sitting in a
metallic maguey plant a bright new Paris doll, dressed in the gaudy
odds and ends of silk that make such a thing an attractive Christmas
present for the nursery. Paste supplied the place of jewels, and a
constellation of false pearls were at the back of her shoulders. The
man kept his gravity, and did reverence to the poor doll, while I
burned with indignation at being imposed upon by a counterfeit
"universal remedy for all diseases." I had often read in the
apothecaries' advertisements cautions against counterfeits, and rewards
for their detection, and I always noticed, from these printed
evidences, that the counterfeits were exactly in proportion to the
worthlessness of the genuine article, and that medicine which was
utterly valueless itself suffered most from the abundance of
counterfeits. So it was with the Lady of Remedios; after she had fallen
below the dignity of a humbug, and no man was found so poor as to do
her reverence, she was spirited away to the Cathedral of the city of
Mexico, in order to save her three jeweled petticoats from being
stolen, and a child's doll, covered with paste jewels, now personified
the great patron saint of the vice-kingdom of New Spain.