To this day, the inferior Irish look upon bonfires as sacred; they say their prayers walking round them, the young dream upon their ashes, and the old take this fire to light up their domestic hearths, imagining some secret undefinable excellence connected with it.—[PRIEST.] * * * * * GREAT STONE CALENDAR OF THE MEXICANS. This stone was found near the site of the present city of Mexico, buried some feet beneath the soil, on which is engraven a great number of hieroglyphics, signifying the divisions of time, the motions of the heavenly bodies, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, with reference to the feasts and sacrifices of the Mexicans, and is called by Humboldt the _Mexican Calendar_, in relief, on basalt, a kind of stone. This deservedly celebrated historiographer and antiquarian has devoted a hundred pages and more of his octavo work, entitled “_Researches in America_,” in describing the similarity which exists between its representations of astrology, astronomy, and the divisions of time, and those of a great multitude of the nations of Asia—Chinese, Japanese, Calmucks, Mongols, Mantchaus, and other Tartar nations; the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Phœnicians, Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, and ancient Celtic nations of Europe. (See the American edition by Helen Maria Williams, vol. i.) The size of this stone was very great, being a fraction over twelve feet square, three feet in thickness, weighing twenty-four tons. It is of the kind of stone denominated trappean porphyry, of the blackish gray color. The place where it was found was more than thirty miles from any quarry of the kind; from which we discover the ability of the ancient inhabitants not only to transport stones of great size, as well as the ancient Egyptians, in building their cities and temples of marble, but also to cut and engrave on stone, equal with the present age. It was discovered in the vale of Mexico, in A. D. 1791, in the spot where Cortez ordered it to be buried, when, with his ferocious Spaniards, that country was devastated. That Spaniard universally broke to pieces all images of stone which came in his way, except such as were too large and strong to be quickly and easily thus affected. Such he buried, among which this sculptured stone was one. This was done to hide them from the sight of the natives, whose strong attachment, whenever they saw them, counteracted their conversion to the Roman Catholic religion. The sculptured work on this stone is in circles; the outer one of all is a trifle over twenty-seven feet in circumference—from which the reader can have a tolerable notion of its size and appearance. The whole stone is intensely crowded with representations and hieroglyphics, arranged, however, in order and harmony, every way equal with any astronomical calendar of the present day. It is further described by Baron Humboldt, who saw and examined it on the spot:—