We have spoken of Teotihuacan--the name means in the ancient tongue of Mexico the "house of God"--and this, the great pyramid of the sun, the work of the shadowy Toltecs, may be seen by the traveller to-day who, taking steamer and train, will convey himself to the high plateau of Mexico, a few miles north of the capital. It is a structure of stone and rubble seven hundred feet upon its broadest side and two hundred feet high, and, anciently, upon its summit stood the golden image of Tonatiuah, whose breastplate flashed back the rays of the rising sun, what time the attendant priests chanted their savage refrain upon the terraces beneath. Restored by the Government of the Republic under President Diaz, the great monument stands up much the same as it did in days of yore. How many centuries have beaten upon it we can scarcely conjecture. It was in ruins when the defeated Cortes and his Spaniards, after the dreadful experience of the _Noche Triste_, the sorrowful night passed beneath its shadow and wept thereunder for his fallen comrades and his ruined enterprise. If little we know of Teotihuacan, what shall be said of Mitla, whose mysterious halls and corridors, scarcely defaced by time, arise from the sands of Oaxaca. And the builders of these temples, have they produced no songs of beauty, no enduring psalms? Had their dreadful religious rites nothing in common with the idea of a true Providence? Hear the psalm of Nezahual-Coyotl, the Solomon of Mexico. This is what he sang: Truly the gods which I adore-- The idols of stone and wood, They speak not nor do they feel, Neither could they fashion the beauty of the heavens, Nor yet that of the earth and the streams, Nor of the trees and the plants which beautify it. Some powerful, hidden and unknown God-- He must be the Creator of the Universe, He alone can console me in my affliction. He alone can still the bitter anguish of this heart. So spake Nezahual-Coyotl, in what has been termed the Golden Age of Texcoco, whose historians, arts and poets were in their time renowned among the nations of Anahuac, on the high Mexican Plateau. This person was a philosopher and a poet, but the writings of the period--the picture-writings--were perversely destroyed by Zumarraga, the first Archbishop of Mexico after the Conquest--an irremediable loss. Hear also the Inca prayer to the Creator, as chanted by the priests and nobles of Peru: Oh Creator: Thou art without equal unto the ends of the earth! Thou who givest life and strength to mankind, saying, let this be a man and let this be a woman. And as thou sayest, so thou givest life, and vouchsafest that man shall live in health and peace, and free from danger. Thou who dwellest in the heights of heaven, in the thunder and in the storm-clouds, hear us. Grant us eternal life and have us in thy keeping. [Illustration: THE ANCIENT CIVILIZATION: RUINS OF MITLA, MEXICO. Vol. I. To face p. 60.]