It is a curious fact, that there is little or no intercourse between these mysterious representatives of a by-gone race. In public they occasionally manifest some little displeasure toward each other in the petty jealousies and interferences in each other’s objects of pleasure or pastime; but, apart from public exhibitions and in the retirement of domestic life, there are wholly absent those natural communications of childhood—the look of kindness, the inquiry of affection, and the remark of innocent and affectionate solicitude. How shall the want of these common and natural associations of social and conventual interests in these children be accounted for? Man, it is true, by his education and acquirements, loses much of the inherent feelings incident to his early training. He can, by strict discipline, escape and defy speculation—elevate or depress himself by the skill and energy of acquired advantages, but it is difficult to stifle or overcome the first and benevolent emotions inspired by a mother’s kindness. It is impossible to contemplate these retrograde movements of Nature (for such they decidedly are) without acknowledging that an obscurity rests upon them which neither science nor physiology have as yet been able to remove. The facts, the astounding facts are before us—we see and contemplate a reality which baffles inquiry, rejects reason, and bewilders speculation. The interest which these little beings have excited in the bosoms of the thousands who have seen them in the city of New York, has been unparalleled in the history and production of those natural phenomena which have in this or any other age been presented to the world. Such an exhibition is as instructive as it is wonderful. There is in such a presentation, inculcated a great moral principle, which it is to be feared has been overlooked, and which it behoves the Christian philosopher, as well as the learned physiologist and the distinguished naturalist, to consider. The great question in relation to the Aztec children is, for what purpose have they been made the representatives, before the civilized world and the American republic, of a supposed or unknown race, yet in ignorance, superstition and moral degradation? Are there no moral purposes in the just government of the Deity to be accomplished by such a revelation? If there yet exists such a race as have produced the unnatural disclosures of moral and physical degeneracy so singularly apparent in the development and unnatural organization of these children, it is certainly the duty (it should be the pride) of government, the boast of philosophy, and the glory of religion, to explore, regenerate, and restore such a race to that moral and mental elevation in which man finds his greatest happiness and his noblest employments.