Like all Catholic countries Mexico has the traditional reverence for religious art. This love has caused a careful preservation of all the paintings that have been brought to the country, and the names of the donors as well. Nearly every church is adorned with some cherished painting, most of which are copies of works by the noted masters held in the great collections of Europe. However, here and there will be found a Michael Angelo, a Velasquez, a Guido, a Murillo or a Rubens. Perhaps the most cherished canvas in the entire country is a Titian at the village of Tzintzuntzan on the shores of Lake Patzcuaro. It is a large canvas on the walls of a little dilapidated church and represents the entombing of Christ. The room that contains it has but one outside opening and that an unglazed window. Mexico herself has developed some expert copyists but few talented artists. One of the most noted was Cabrera, a Zapotec Indian, who has been called the Rafael of Mexico. He was architect, sculptor and painter, and has done some fine work in each line. Politics has in times past absorbed too much of the time of the young men of Mexico so that the arts have been neglected. The Escuela National de Bellas Artes, or National School of Fine Arts, in the City of Mexico is an excellent institution and is liberally supported by the government. Charles Dudley Warner says: “It was a marvellous time of original and beautiful work that covered Mexico with churches, and set up in all the remote and almost inaccessible villages towers and domes that match the best work of Italy and recall the triumphs of Moorish art.” No one with even the slightest love of architecture can help but be impressed with the great variety of design and grandeur of construction of the churches of Mexico. Though designed by Spanish architects and retaining the Moorish characteristics of that period, they are the work of native workmen and have received some Aztec touches. On the façades, towers and portals are designs and figures made by these workmen which are doubtless Indian legends or traditions of a prehistoric age. They resemble strongly those strange symbols of the ancient Egyptians and Persians. Some of the churches which the traveller encounters in villages consisting of low adobe huts fairly overwhelm one with their splendour. In places a great church will loom up in the horizon with scarcely a sign of human habitation near it. Only in the tropics are these great houses of worship wanting. The danger of earthquakes precluded the building of lofty structures there, and the priests of the conquering age, which was the great era of construction, rather avoided the hot lands for the cooler plateaus.