Such is the natural basis of the myth of Quetzalcoatl, and the justification of my remark that we find in him the pendant of those deities, serpents and birds in one, who were adored in Central America, and who answered, like Quetzalcoatl, to the idea of the Atlantic wind. He was, in truth, the ancient deity that the Nahuas or Mayas of the civilized immigrations brought with them when they settled in Anahuac and still further North. Like all the other gods of these regions, Quetzalcoatl had assumed the human shape more and more completely. We still possess, especially in the Trocadero Museum at Paris, great blocks of stone on which he is represented as a serpent covered with feathers, coiled up and sleeping till the time comes for him to wake. But there are also statues of him in human form, save that his body is surmounted by a bird's head, with the tongue projected. Now in the Mexican hieroglyphie this bird's head, with the tongue put out, is no other than the symbol of the wind. Hence, too, his names of _Tohil_ "the hummer" or "the whisperer," _Ehecatl_ "the breeze," _Nauihehecatl_ "the lord of the four winds," &c. The naturalistic meaning of Quetzalcoatl, then, cannot admit of the smallest doubt. It is probably to the more gentle and humane religious tendency which was kept alive by the priesthood of this deity, that we must attribute the attempted reform of the king of Tezcuco, Netzalhuatcoyotl (the fasting coyote), who has been called the Mexican Solomon. He was a poet and philosopher as well as king, and had no love either of idolatry or of sanguinary sacrifices. He had a great pyramidal teocalli of nine stages erected in his capital for the worship of the god of heaven, to whom he brought no offerings except flowers and perfumes. He died in 1472, and, as far as we can see, his reformation made no progress. The ever-increasing preponderance of the Aztecs was as unfavourable as possible to this humane and spiritual tendency in religion.[15] Yet one loves to dwell upon the fact, that even in the midst of a religion steeped in blood, a protest was inspired by the sentiment of humanity, linked, as it should always be, with the progress of religious thought. III. We must now proceed with our review of the Mexican deities, but I must be content with indicating the most important amongst them; for without admitting, with Gomara--who registered many names and epithets belonging to one and the same divinity as indicating so many distinct beings--that their number rose to two thousand, we find that the most moderate estimate of the historians raises them to two hundred and sixty. We shall confine ourselves, then, to the most significant.