nal progress. In our own instance, through what
seas of blood had we to wade in abolishing that long standing curse of
this land, negro slavery. The Czar of Russia freed the millions of
serfs in his empire by a bold and manly ukase; but the nobility, who
counted their wealth by the number of human beings whom they held in
thralldom, have not yet forgiven the Czar for doing so. Revenge for that
philanthropic act is still the motive of the conspiracies which
occasionally come to the surface in that country. "Every age has its
problem," says Heinrich Heine, "by solving which humanity is helped
forward."

The federal capital of Mexico is in the centre of a country of
surpassing richness and beauty, but from the day of its foundation,
between seven and eight hundred years ago, it has been the theatre of
constant revolutions and bitter warfare, where hecatombs of human beings
have been sacrificed upon idolatrous altars, where a foreign religion
has been established at the spear's point, through torture by fire and
the rack, and where rivers of blood have been ruthlessly spilled in
battle, sometimes in repelling a foreign foe, but only too often in
still more cruel civil wars. Some idea of the chronic political
upheavals of the country may be had from the brief statement that there
have been fifty-four presidents, one regency, and one emperor in the
last sixty-two years, and nearly every change of government has been
effected by violence. Between 1821 and 1868, the form of government was
changed ten times.

Politeness and courtesy are as a rule characteristics of the intelligent
and middle classes of the people of Mexico, and are also observable in
intercourse with the humbler ranks of the masses. They have heretofore
looked upon Americans as being hardly more than semi-civilized. Those
with whom they have been most brought in contact have been reckless and
adventurous frontiersmen, drovers, Texans, cow boys, often individuals
who have left their homes in the Northern or Middle States with the
stigma of crime upon them. The inference they have drawn from contact
with such representatives of our population has been but natural. If
Mexicans travel abroad, they generally do so in Europe, sailing from
Vera Cruz, and they know comparatively little of us socially. It is
equally true that we have been in the habit of regarding the Mexicans in
much the same light. This mutual feeling is born of ignorance, and the
nearer relation int