Without speculating upon the probable connexion between the mound-builders and the inhabitants of ancient Mexico, we will endeavour, with the aid of Prescott, and other writers, to ascertain something of the faith professed by Montezuma and his subjects. Derived from two sources, there were two distinct elements in the Mexican religion; one of these was gentle and mild as the teaching of Christ, and the other, ferocious and cruel, like the practice of such of his followers as the sensual Crusaders, the persecuting Popes of Italy, and the brutal, money-grubbing Spaniards. The former gradually dried up, like primitive Christianity, and the harmlessness of the dove was replaced by the ferocity of the wolf. It is in strict accordance with human nature, that virtues are harder to maintain than vices, hence malignancy swelled itself up and became dominant. The priests of the sanguinary class contrived as burdensome a ceremonial as ever existed in Judea, Greece, Spain, or Modern Rome, and they surrounded their deities with conceptions as grotesque as those which are clustered round the Hindoo gods of to-day, the divinities of the Greeks and Romans, and the innumerable virgins, saints, and martys of mediaeval and modern papal Christianity. The power and the inclination to make fetish is certainly not confined to African negroes. The Mexicans recognized a supreme Creator as the God by whom we live, one who was, for them, omnipresent and omniscient--the giver of all good things, "without whom man is as nothing." He was said to be "invisible, incorporeal, a being of absolute perfection and perfect purity," "under whose wings men may find repose and a sure defence." But this deity, though single, was subdivided by the Mexican theologians, much in the same way as Jehovah became separated into an innumerable host of angels, archangels, and devils, and as Zeus was split up into an equally numerous army of gods, goddesses, and demigods. The Mexicans had thirteen major, and about two hundred minor, divinities, to one or other of whom each day was devoted, much in the same way as certain modern Christians believe in one Creator, four persons, three of whom are male and the other female, seven archangels, and some hundreds of saints, virgins, or martyrs, to each of whom one day of the year is consecrated. There are more gods and goddesses in the Papal calendar than in that of Ancient Mexico, Greece, or even Rome. At the head of the celestial army was "the god of war," "the patron of the kingdom," whose temples were more noble in their barbaric majesty than any other, and to whom human beings were sacrificed in abundance. They were the noblest creatures that could be found, and in truth, there were very few other animals to offer in their place.