e nation with his silver bars
to coin; but, now that the mint is farmed out, it is removed to a
private establishment. In this building are all the archives of the
vice-kingdom and the republic, and he who would study the history of
the past must diligently labor here.

The Cathedral is upon the northern side of the Grand Plaza, and is said
to occupy the site of the great _teocalli_, and to have a rocky
foundation. Whether this last assertion is really true, I have no
means of verifying, but there must be something unusual about its
foundations, as its towers are the only ones that I know of in the city
that do not lean a little. Ninety years was this vast edifice, or,
rather, pile of edifices, in building, and the amount of treasure
expended in its construction seems to a stranger to be fabulous. The
best of its many fine views, or, rather, the one I admire the most, is
the one from the entrance to the National Palace, though the one most
commonly given is that from the front of the Municipality building,
which occupies the entire south front of the Plaza.

IMAGES IN THE CATHEDRAL.

The interior of the Cathedral is certainly imposing, but I had so early
in life attached the idea of the Gothic architecture to every thing
magnificent in the way of churches, that this Moro-Spanish style fails
to produce an effect commensurate with the merits of the building.
Again, images are not associated with my early ideas of divine worship;
and when, passing from side altar to side altar, I feel that I am only
looking at wax figures, they produce no solemnity in me. And when I
afterward learned, or thought I learned, that the showman of the
strolling museum got his "wax figures" at the same shop, or from the
same moulds in which were cast the images of the saints, they call up
the idea of Punch and Judy.

Before these images I have seen hundreds of worshipers prostrate,
repeating their prayers with the most profound reverence, while the
sight of the image filled me with boyish glee that I could hardly
suppress. The identical image that was labeled Bluebeard in the museum
is now Saint Peter. The "Disconsolate Widow" is now "the Weeping
Virgin." Charlotte Temple, and the baby that never knew its father, is
now Mary and the infant Christ. Macbeth, looking as though he had the
toothache, is Saint Francis. Othello is here a saint; and the sleeping
Desdemona is now the sleeping Virgin. The monster that poisoned six
husbands, and sit