It would, doubtless, be interesting to carry our view southward into the region of Peru, and to describe the monuments of a civilization on a par with that of the Aztecs, though apparently unconnected therewith in its origin. The immense extent of many Peruvian works; their roads, sometimes nearly 2000 miles in length, and constructed of masonry equally solid with any remains of antiquity; their subterranean aqueducts for the irrigation of dry lands, extending for hundreds of miles; their edifices of porphyry, granite, or brick, all displayed skill in the useful arts concurrent with that of the ancient Mexicans. In some points they were even superior, for while the Aztec race passed to the agricultural mode of life without gaining any acquaintance with the utility of domestic animals, or the economy of pastoral subsistence; on the contrary, we find that the Peruvians were masters of immense flocks of llamas, alpacas, and two other varieties of sheep, which furnished them with valuable supplies of fine wool for clothing, and with flesh for food. A description of the manufactures and arts of the Peruvians would be so closely similar in its details to that already given of the Aztecs, that we may here dismiss the subject with this remark--that the former were superior to their northern neighbors in the designing and construction of public works of importance, but far inferior to them in the art of expressing their thoughts by signs, and generally in intellectual acquirement. The curious arrangement of knotted cords, by which the Peruvians recorded events, is, perhaps, among the most rude of all barbarous inventions. Curiously enough, similar knotted cords, in modern times, have been used as alphabet and books for the blind. When, from the busy scene of European revival and progress, of which we have remarked a few features, we turn our view to the nations of the East, how strikingly contrasted is the prospect! Instead of the turmoil of change, the hurry after new inventions, the disuse of old customs and processes, we see the life of art to be one steady, even tenor. It seems almost as if a law had been laid down in the very nature of the inhabitant of those climes--“Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.” He appears to have reached a point of perfection in many manufactures, in times so early that their history is fabulous; and to have scarcely improved his position during the lapse of thousands of years. This singular want of advance beyond a certain point, together with many peculiarities in the industrial condition of the Chinese, combine to render a notice of this curious people indispensable to the present article.