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Mexicans are tolerantly sorry for such nations as still cling to the superstition of a cruder scheme.

The edifice of the first university in America (founded by the Spanish crown in 1551) is to-day occupied by the National Conservatory of Music-an invention of poor Carlota. The National Academy of Art (ancient Academy of San Carlos) stands where Fray Pedro de Gante founded, in 1524, the first school in the New World-a school for Indians. The Normal School for males, with its six hundred pupils and its first-class German equipment, occupies the old convent of Santa Teresa (1678). The Normal School for females has fourteen hundred* pupils, and is in a hundred-thousand-dollar building of 1648. The fine old Jesuit college of San Ildefonso, erected in 1749 at a cost of $400,000, is now filled with the thousand pupils of the National Preparatory School. The National College of Medicine is housed in the old home of the Inquisition (1732)the chatot edifice whose four hanging arches at each corner of the lower corridor are famous. The building was taken for its present purpose in this century, the Holy Office dying in America with

* In both these schools the figures include the primary departments. Pupils are educated from ABC up to a teacher's diploma. +Flat-nosed.

the independence, but the medical college was established by royal decree of 1768. It has now several hundreds of pupils. San Lorenzo (1598) is now the manual-training school, where poor boys are gratuitously taught lithography, engraving, printing, carpentry, and many other trades. The similar institution for girls is of course modern, dating only from 1874. The National Library, with its 200,000 volumes, dwells in the splendid sequestered church of San Agustin, given it by Maximilian. The National Museum-just now not in wholly ideal hands-occupies part of the million-dollar building erected in 1731 for the royal mint.

And so on through a list that would rival the catalogue of the ships. The School of Mines and Engineering, however, stands in no dead man's shoes. Its magnificent building of chiluca (the nearest to granite the valley affords) was built for it by the great Tolsa in 1793, and cost three millions. As late as 1824 Humboldt declared, "No city of the New Continent, not excepting those of the United States, presents scientific establishments so great and solid as those of the capital of Mexico." Except as to the buildings, of course, so much could not be said today. We have forged ahead (though only in this generation) by our vast superiority in numbers and wealth. But it is as

true now as it was in 1824 that the educational institutions of Mexico can be ignored only by the ignorant.

The gravest fault in the present capital is natural enough to its transitional state -the vertigo of sudden progress-but it is an unworthiness I pray educated Mexico may see in time. As with us, the wine of material development begins to mount to the head, and in their splendid reaching out for the new they too much forget the old. No modern structure in the capital compares in dignity and worth of architecture with any one of hundreds of buildings which date from the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, and few will last so long as they will still. Too many wealthy dons are erecting residences copied after-and ugly and uncomfortable as-the American parvenu's. A needless vandalism has already dynamited a hundred arches of the massy old aqueduct of Chapultepec, which would be a treasure to any city, and its older brother of Santa Fe is as wantonly breached. There was even a movement to erase the noble fountain of the Salto de Agua (apparently for no other reason than that it dates from 1779, and is worth all the modern fountains in the city put together), and to use its room for a few yards of pavement. But happily this iniquity was forestalled. I cannot believe a temper so open to sentiment as is the Latin American will much longer coun

tenance these vandalisms; and if that were conceivable, the new commercial sense cannot remain blind to the fact that these superb old landmarks are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Mexico. All the march of modern progress need not trample a single one of these monuments.

Even the squat, unpretentious National Palace has suffered seriously within. It is well that public offices be habitable, but they can be made so without philistinism; and Hon. Ignacio Mariscal (sometime minister to Washington, now VicePresident of the republic and Minister of Foreign Relations) deserves gratitude for having conserved the magnificent old ceilings of Spanish cedar which are the charm of the Hall of Ambassadors and of his department, while the inutile "utilitarian" has plastered most of the rest of the Palacio.

From the halls which overlook from the south the patio de honor, Mexico has been guided, well or ill, these three centuries and a half. Here the viceroys interpreted the royal cédulas and made bandos of their own-like that which in 1554 forbade all jewellers, because his Excellency saw that luxury grew too fat. Here Iturbide and Maximilian (the only emperors Mexico ever had) held their little circumstance before the tragic end. Here Juarez, the only man under the re

*Fifty feet high and six hundred square.

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public (up to within twenty years) able to keep his footing in power for six years, did his pregnant work -at least while he was not dodging the French armies. And here the only Mexican President who has surpassed him has made his incomparably greater conquest for the father-land.

It was well for Mexico that when silver took its Gadarene course Diaz was in the saddle. There is no uncertainty in saying that no other man of her whole history-unless it were that great first viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza - could. have lifted her safely across the gulf.

Here was a silver country, not by fanatic experiment, but by geologic predestination. Practically she never produced gold, and the unparalleled coinage of her mints in all these centuries* has been almost exclusively white. She is producing still seventyfive millions of silver a year.

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was a chief cause of intervention and Maximilian. But Diaz had the clearer head. His first step was to secure the credit of his nation. He simply said, "The debt shall be met in gold," and set himself to the pleasant task of finding two dollars for one.

Revenue can be raised in Mexico; and at the side of Diaz was unquestionably one of the ablest financiers of modern times-José Ives Limantour, present Minister of Hacienda-and behind them they had the Mexican people. It is only in the formative stage of a nation that a government appeal to patriotism is stronger than selfish luxury or business greed. When it came to paying two prices for imports, Mexico began to get along with

on the Croffton plan, which, I believe, has not yet its equal anywhere among us. It cost over two millions, covers eighteen acres, and is perfect in every detail of sanitation, security, and comfort. Before these lines are published it will be occupied, and the days of Tlaltelolco and Belem will be done. There is similar activity all over the republic in replacing the old ad interim convent-jails with institutions up to date. The state penitentiary at Puebla, for instance, is a type of what is being done by cities we would account small, and states that seem to us

THE BARRACKS OF LA MERCED.

but sparsely settled. There is no hanging in Mexico, and (outside what concerns the army and the brigands) no capital punishment. Nor are irons allowed under the new dispensation. I have known the holy horror of officers of ours at not being allowed to manacle prisoners they were extraditing. The modern Mexican theory is that irons are an ignominy, and that it is the officer's business to keep his man. It may surprise the average reader to learn that the object of prisons in Mexico is not so much punishment as reform by education. To

such, the modern laws of Diaz regulating penitentiaries should be instructive reading. In these laws, of course, the credit system for good behavior cuts as certain a figure as the compulsory education and the learning of trades in the finely appointed shops.

Except the artillery and the engineers, whatever regiment you visit is quartered in an old convent. Of these barracks the most interesting is the Merced, founded in 1601, with a patio which is one of the finest in the city. Many schools are similar debtors to the unthanked past; and in their case, at least, one may be most willing to pardon the usurpation. The capital has, by-the-way, fifty public schools for boys, forty-nine for girls, six mixed, and nine night schools. There is also a large number of private institutions, from the kindergarten up, and of special schools, training-schools, and the like. It is also to be noted, amid the educational progress, that on the 16th of September the metric system became compulsory throughout the republic, and that

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Mexicans are tolerantly sorry for such nations as still cling to the superstition of a cruder scheme.

The edifice of the first university in America (founded by the Spanish crown in 1551) is to-day occupied by the National Conservatory of Music-an invention of poor Carlota. The National Academy of Art (ancient Academy of San Carlos) stands where Fray Pedro de Gante founded, in 1524, the first school in the New World-a school for Indians. The Normal School for males, with its six hundred pupils and its first-class German equip ment, occupies the old convent of Santa Teresa (1678). The Normal School for females has fourteen hundred* pupils, and is in a hundred-thousand-dollar building of 1648. The fine old Jesuit college of San Ildefonso, erected in 1749 at a cost of $400,000, is now filled with the thousand pupils of the National Preparatory School. The National College of Medicine is housed in the old home of the Inquisition (1732) the chatot edifice whose four hanging arches at each corner of the lower corridor are famous. The building was taken for its present purpose in this century, the Holy Office dying in America with

* In both these schools the figures include the primary departments. Pupils are educated from A B C up to a teacher's diploma.

+Flat-nosed.

the independence, but the medical college was established by royal decree of 1768. It has now several hundreds of pupils. San Lorenzo (1598) is now the manual-training school, where poor boys are gratuitously taught lithography, engraving, printing, carpentry, and many other trades. The similar institution for girls is of course modern, dating only from 1874. The National Library, with its 200,000 volumes, dwells in the splendid sequestered church of San Agustin, given it by Maximilian. The National Museum-just now not in wholly ideal hands-occupies part of the million-dollar building erected in 1731 for the royal mint. And so on through a list that would rival the catalogue of the ships. The School of Mines and Engineering, however, stands in no dead man's shoes. Its magnificent building of chiluca (the nearest to granite the valley affords) was built for it by the great Tolsa in 1793, and cost three millions. As late as 1824 Humboldt declared, "No city of the New Continent, not excepting those of the United States, presents scientific establishments so great and solid as those of the capital of Mexico." Except as to the buildings, of course, so much could not be said today. We have forged ahead (though only in this generation) by our vast superiority in numbers and wealth. But it is as

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