The aboriginal nations of North and South America must certainly be spoken of as civilised, though it is curious to remember how great authorities seem to differ as to what civilisation means. Macaulay, in his Life of lord Clive, writing with a recklessness of statement not unusual with him when aiming at some picturesque contrast, describes the ancient Mexicans as “savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, and who wielded no better weapons than those which could be made out of sticks, flints, and fishbones, and who regarded a horse-soldier as a monster.” But Bernal Diaz, whose report as an eye-witness has stood the test of years of later investigation and dispute, describes the appearance of the great cities from without as like the enchanted castles of romance, and full of great towers and temples. And within, “every kind of eatable, every form of dress, medicines, perfumes, unguents, furniture, lead, copper, gold, and silver ornaments wrought in the form of fruit, adorned the porticoes and allured the passer-by. Paper, that great material of civilisation, was to be obtained in this wonderful emporium; also every kind of earthenware, cotton of all colours in skeins, &c. There were officers who went continually about the market-place, watching what was sold, and the measures which were used.” If we are to take the judgment of Lord Macaulay as our guide in determining what may be true civilisation, we must set down the Greeks in the reign of Alexander, or the Italians in the days of Leo the tenth, as “savages,” because they were ignorant of the electric telegraph; or ourselves now, because we cannot guide balloons through the air. The sculptures and works of art in the ruined cities of Yucatan are also to be thought of. Many engravings of them are given in Stephens’s central America. Nor is it enough to say that the prehistoric carvings are merely true to nature. Their merit is clearly seen when compared with the plates of Indian drawings and picture writings in Schoolcraft’s history of the Indian tribes of the United States: or again, of a different character altogether, the illuminations in Indian and Persian manuscripts. In some respects these last are of the highest quality as regards execution, but the animals are generally drawn in a manner purely conventional, with scant feeling of truth or beauty, and little power of expressing it. [Illustration] In short, the prehistoric carvings are from the hands of men who were neither beginners nor blunderers in their art. The practised skill of a modern wood engraver would scarcely exceed in firmness and decision, nor in evident rapidity of execution, the outline of the animals in the example which is here engraved. [Illustration]