t. They practised ablutions, vigils, penance by flagellation or
pricking with aloe thorns. They compelled the people to auricular
confession, required of them penance, gave absolution. Their
ecclesiastical system had reached a strength which was never attained in
Europe, since absolution by the priest for civil offences was an
acquittal in the eye of the law. It was the received doctrine that men
do not sin of their own free will, but because they are impelled thereto
by planetary influences. With sedulous zeal, the clergy engrossed the
duty of public education, thereby keeping society in their grasp.
[Sidenote: Its literary condition.] Their writing was on cotton cloth or
skins, or on papyrus made of the aloe. At the conquest immense
collections of this kind of literature were in existence, but the first
Archbishop of Mexico burnt, as was affirmed, a mountain of such
manuscripts in the market-place, stigmatizing them as magic scrolls.
About the same time, and under similar circumstances, Cardinal Ximenes
burnt a vast number of Arabic manuscripts in Granada.

[Sidenote: Divisions of time: the week, month, year.] The condition of
astronomy in Mexico is illustrated as it is in Egypt by the calendar.
The year was of eighteen months, each month of twenty days, five
complementary ones being added to make up the three hundred and
sixty-five. The month had four weeks, the week five days; the last day,
instead of being for religious purposes, was market day. To provide for
the six additional hours of the year, they intercalated twelve and a
half days every fifty-two years. At the conquest the Mexican calendar
was in a better condition than the Spanish. As in some other countries,
the clergy had for ecclesiastical purposes a lunar division of time. The
day had sixteen hours, commencing at sunrise. They had sun-dials for
determining the hour, and also instruments for the solstices and
equinoxes. They had ascertained the globular form of the earth and the
obliquity of the ecliptic. The close of the fifty-second year was
celebrated with grand religious ceremonials; all the fires were suffered
to go out, and new ones kindled by the friction of sticks. [Sidenote:
Private life, mechanical arts, trade.] Their agriculture was superior to
that of Europe; there was nothing in the Old World to compare with the
menageries and botanical gardens of Huaxtepec, Chapultepec, Istapalapan,
and Tezcuco. They practised with no inconsiderable skill th