but the king and queen could enter into their convent. The closest attention was paid to the morals of these maidens, and visitors were sent every year to inspect the institutions, and to report on the state of their discipline; a plan similar to which has been repeatedly proposed in Christian England, yet never sanctioned by the parliament! If a virgin was discovered in an intrigue she was buried alive, her lover was strangled, and the town or village to which he belonged was razed to the ground, and sowed with stones, to efface even the memory of its site. These solar attendants were all of royal blood, and were estimated to number fifteen hundred; but to provincial convents the inferior nobility were allowed to send their daughters, and sometimes a peculiarly lovely peasant girl was admitted. The convents were all sumptuously furnished. But, though virgins of the sun, they were brides of the Incas, and we cannot fail, when we read of the vast harem of the Peruvian monarch, to think of the female establishments of the Jewish Solomon, of the Persian Ahasuerus, and that of Louis XV. of Christian France. If at any time the Inca reduced his harem, the superfluous concubines were restored to their homes, swelling with the importance which they had gained by their familiarity with the monarch. Polygamy was permitted. Matrimony was effected by the Inca, or other chief man, joining the hands of the parties. The king usually espoused his own sister, but no other person was allowed to do so. No marriage was valid without the consent of parents. As a general rule, all unions were effected on the same day of the year, and thus the wedding of couples was followed by general rejoicing. The genius of the Peruvian government penetrated into the most private recesses of domestic life, allowing no man to act for himself, even in those personal matters in which none but himself, or his family, could be interested. No Peruvian was too low for the fostering vigilance of the government; none was so high that he was not made to feel his dependence upon it in every act of his life. The government of the Incas was the mildest, but the most searching and beneficent, of despotisms.