"A highly curious specimen of Mexican sculpture is an exceeding hard stone resembling hornstein, a coarse kind of jade, it is a species of compact tale, of most elaborate workmanship, and the bust of a priest, or perhaps of the idol representing the Sun. The head is crowned with a high mitre-shaped cap, decorated with jewels and feathers, it has long pendant earrings. The hands are raised, the right sustains something resembling a knotted club, while the left takes hold of a festoon of flowers which descends from the head; all the other parts are covered with the great rattlesnake, whose enormous head and jaws are on the right side of the figure, while the backs and sides are covered with the scales and rattles of the deadly reptile." Our prescribed limits are now reached, and we are able to add but little to what has already been advanced exhibiting the widespread prevalence of this singular form of worship. Again and again has wonderment been expressed that it should ever be possible for a creature so disgusting to become an object of worship, but so it has been, and no age or country seems to have been strange to it. Very early indeed in history men began to worship a serpent, that brazen one of the Exodus, which Hezekiah destroyed on account of the idolatry into which it led the people. But if that object was put away, the hope that the worship would cease was vain, for it started up amongst the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and spread into Greece, Esthonia, Finland, Italy, Persia, Hindustan, Ceylon, China, Japan, Burmah, Java, Arabia, Syria, Ethiopia, Britain, Mexico, and Peru. Such was its extent--wide as the world itself, and vast beyond estimate or description was its influence over the minds of those who came within its reach. Let the curious reader who would know more, and who would make himself acquainted with the multitudinous forms in which the emblem was depicted, study the works of such writers as Kingsford and Montfaucon, with their numerous and well executed plates, and he will meditate with astonishment upon the singular fascination which this repulsive reptile seems to have exercised over the human mind. He is said, we know, so to fascinate the victim he is about to seize as his prey that the unhappy creature is deprived of all power of resistance, a fascination no less overwhelming seems to have paralyzed the human mind and caused it to adopt from some cause or other such a repelling reptile as an object of worship. The spell is broken now, however, and but little remains of what was once so universal, beyond the earth mounds where its temples stood and the half ruined sculptures collected in the museums of civilized countries. THE END. FOOTNOTES: [1] Deane. [2] Eusebius. [3] Aristoph. [4] Cory's Ancient Fragments, Intro. 34. [5] Origin Pagan Idol., Vol. 1, p. 175. [6] Landseer's Sabæan Res. [7] Coleman's Hind. Mythology. [8] Origin Pagan Idol., vol. 1, p. 45.