The progress of maritime discovery, and the new impulse given thereby to commercial and industrial progress, has been briefly noticed. But while compelled by our narrow limits to pass by, with a hasty word of mention, the enterprise which raised the Venetians and Dutch to the rank of leading powers in Europe, and which conferred the treasures of Africa and remotest India upon the Portuguese nation, the rise of the Spanish power in the new world must be noticed more fully, as opening a new and peculiar phase of civilization to our view. The singular state of society among the Aztec race at the period of the Spanish conquest of Mexico is doubly interesting, from the striking contrast which it presented to any thing in the old world; and from the fact that it shows us the highest point of a development, the progress of which no traces remain to illustrate. Suddenly transported from the stirring scenes of martial enterprise and reviving industry of Europe in the middle ages, the steel-clad Spaniard found himself among nations where the blindest and most abject superstition stood side by side with social refinement; where the prevailing mildness of manners was no bar to the dreadful orgies of human sacrifice; and where the busy industry of millions had been for ages raising the pyramid of art and science, in complete isolation from their brethren of the old world. Various points of resemblance will be noticed by the reader between the arts of these American races and those of ancient Egypt. For instance, the pyramidal temples found by the Spaniards on their first invasion much resembled the Egyptian structures, in their form, and were constructed of solid masses of earth encased with stone or brick facing. They differed from Egyptian pyramids in being higher proportionally to the size of the base. They were ascended by external stairs, and were arranged in several stories. The area at the summit was surmounted by towers;--sanctuaries where the images of their gods were erected, and where the horrid stone for human sacrifice stood, close by the altars, on which a never-dying fire was burning.