{**} [Prescott’s picture of Montezuma’s domestic establishment and way of living is drawn, without enlargement, from sketches supplied by Cortés and Bernal Diaz--two men who _saw_ the state in which the Aztec chief lived. Their observations extended over a period of only five days, as Cortés made Montezuma his prisoner at the end of that time. Subsequent historians, amplifying details only hinted at by the two eye-witnesses, have given free rein to the imagination. The last important contribution to the subject came from the pen of H. H. Bancroft, Native Races, vol. ii. chap. iv (Palaces and Households of the Nahua Kings). It was his glowing account, in which were incorporated the details specified by the later Spanish historians, which so roused the indignation of Lewis H. Morgan as to move that scholar to put forth his famous essay, “Montezuma’s Dinner.” This essay created an immense impression when it first appeared, but a careful examination will demonstrate the fact that it contains almost as many misstatements as do the pages of Bancroft. Mr. Morgan begins by saying that the histories of Spanish America may be trusted in whatever relates “to the acts and personal characteristics of the Indians: in whatever relates to their weapons, implements, and utensils, fabrics, _food_, and raiment, and things of a similar character,” and then entirely ignores the fact that Cortés and Bernal Diaz actually _saw_ what they afterward described. He points out, what most men will at once admit, that the dinners the Conquerors described were not repasts provided for a king alone, but that they represented the daily fare of a great communal household. Meals prepared on almost as large a scale were served in other great communal houses in Mexico. In fact, all the dinners served in the city were communal dinners, for all the authorities agree that even the smallest houses were inhabited by several families. But when, with fine scorn, he takes exception to the expression “wine cellars,” and claims, first, that cellars were impossible in a city where the level of the streets and courts was but four feet above the level of the water of the surrounding lake, and, second, that the Aztecs had no knowledge of wine, we feel that he is hypercritical. When he goes on to say that “though an acid beer, pulque, was a common beverage of the Aztecs, yet _it is hardly supposable that even this was used at dinner_,” one is inevitably led to the conclusion that Mr. Morgan had but little knowledge of the dinner habits of some of his contemporaries in the cities of western New York. It is not inconceivable that even in his own city of Rochester families can be found who take beer with their principal meal.--M.]