“It is a gentle and affectionate thought. That, in immeasurable heights above us, At our first birth the wreath of love was woven With sparkling stars for flowers.” COLERIDGE: Translation of Wallenstein, act 2, sc. 4. Schiller is more true to poetry than history, when he tells us, in the beautiful passage of which this is part, that the worship of the stars took the place of classic mythology. It existed long before it. [198] Gama has given us a complete almanac of the astrological year, with the appropriate signs and divisions, showing with what scientific skill it was adapted to its various uses. (Descripcion, Parte 1, pp. 25-31, 62-76.) Sahagun has devoted a whole book to explaining the mystic import and value of these signs, with a minuteness that may enable one to cast up a scheme of nativity for himself. (Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 4.) It is evident he fully believed the magic wonders which he told. “It was a deceitful art,” he says, “pernicious and idolatrous, and was never contrived by human reason.” The good father was certainly no philosopher. [199] See, among others, the Cod. Tel.-Rem., Part 4, Pl. 22, ap. Antiq. of Mexico, vol. i. [200] “It can hardly be doubted,” says Lord Kingsborough, “that the Mexicans were acquainted with many scientific instruments of strange invention, as compared with our own; whether the _telescope_ may not have been of the number is uncertain; but the thirteenth plate of M. Dupaix’s _Monuments_, Part Second, which represents a man holding something of a similar nature to his eye, affords reason to suppose that they knew how to improve the powers of vision.” (Antiq. of Mexico, vol. vi. p. 15, note.) The instrument alluded to is rudely carved on a conical rock. It is raised no higher than the neck of the person who holds it, and looks--to my thinking--as much like a musket as a telescope; though I shall not infer the use of fire-arms among the Aztecs from this circumstance. (See vol. iv. Pl. 15.) Captain Dupaix, however, in his commentary on the drawing, sees quite as much in it as his lordship. Ibid., vol. v. p. 241. [201] Gama, Descripcion, Parte 1, sec. 4; Parte 2, Apend.--Besides this colossal fragment, Gama met with some others, designed, probably, for similar scientific uses, at Chapoltepec. Before he had leisure to examine them, however, they were broken up for materials to build a furnace,--a fate not unlike that which has too often befallen the monuments of ancient art in the Old World.