Any one who is acquainted with the conditions existing in Spain or any part of Spanish America would naturally surmise that education in New Spain is at a low ebb. What education does exist is confined to a few. When you know that districts can be found in Spain to-day where scarcely ten per cent. of the inhabitants have mastered the art of reading or writing, it is not surprising to learn that after three centuries of the rule of Spanish governors and viceroys, ninety-five per cent. of the population of Mexico still remained in profound ignorance. Learning for the masses was regarded as prejudicial by those representatives and misrepresentatives of the home government. One viceroy voiced this sentiment by saying that only the catechism should be taught in America. Students are not likely to go beyond the learning of their teachers, and these were obliged to pass examination in only the most elementary branches. As a natural result, instruction soon fell into the hands of the incompetent. Teaching did not attract the bright minds. Those who cared for scholastic attainments prepared for the church or law. Others became soldiers or adventurers. The first viceroy, Mendoza, was a broad-minded man and interested in his new empire. At his death he left a sum of money with which to establish a university to be open to all classes. This institution was actually established as early as 1551. Very few of the aborigines attained much culture, although a few of the Aztec nobles were notable exceptions. Education was in general left to the church but was neglected by that institution. The Jesuits, whatever their faults may have been, were interested in education, and at the time of their expulsion in 1767 conducted a large number of colleges and seminaries. In the seventeenth century the City of Mexico was looked upon as a great seat of learning and a literary centre. Even before the Shakesperian era of English writers, literature had its beginnings in that city. Bishop Zumarraga, the first “Bishop of the Great City of Tenuchtitlan,” encouraged writers as well as miraculous visitations such as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Through his efforts, the first printing press of the new world had been set up in this seat of ancient Aztec civilization, in 1535, about a hundred years before one was in use in the British colonies. A dozen books had been printed in the City of Mexico before 1550, and almost a hundred before the close of the sixteenth century. Some of these were printed in the Indian languages including the Mixtec, Zapotec, Nahuatl, Huaxtec, Tarascan and others.