the ill-assorted pictures in a pork-packing millionaire's dining-room.
The merits of the paintings, if they had any, were lost in the
nauseating gold of their heavy frames. Croesus never loathed the
precious metal as we did, when, shading our eyes, we gazed up at the
abominable background of the High Altar. Smaller altars there were
everywhere around: innumerable saints in tawdry metal crowns fluttered
frowsy linens; coarsely realistic pictures of the Passion made you blush
for your Catholic fellow-creatures. Canopies of satin and brocade over
episcopal stalls and gilded marble pulpits brought to one's mind the
irony of it all: the gorgeous-vestmented priests daring to ape
vicegerency for Him who bade His ministers "go forth neither with purse
nor scrip." "Verily they toil not neither do they spin; yet Solomon,"
etc. Yes, right there on the ill-laid pavement kneels an Indian--his
arms outspread, his fanatic eyes lifted in an ecstasy of faith to the
gilding. He and thousands like him--"the hungry sheep, look up and are
not fed"; but the shepherds take care that the flocks feed them. They
have always got their cut of juicy mutton. Mexico is not alone. Alas!
Sacerdotalism has its dupes in every land. We walked out into the
sunshine, glad to remember that we had stood in the wonderful Abbey
nave, our eyes restful with its glorious grey chastity, our hearts
stilled with that holy calm which seems to bring so much nearer "the
peace of God which passeth all understanding."
But if Mexico is poor in buildings, she has features which certainly
entitle her to be called a great city. The superb Paseo (there are
others, but fine as they are they are dwarfed beside it) would alone
make a capital. Between two and three hundred feet wide, lined with a
double row of trees and beautifully kept flower-beds, its course broken,
here and there, by circuses where stand noble statues centring lawns of
velvety turf, it sweeps northward, a majestic thoroughfare, towards
Chapultepec--the Mexican Hyde Park--where stands the Castle (it does not
look like one), the summer residence of grim Porfirio Diaz. Nothing can
be finer than the view up this noble roadway, and praise is due to
authorities who have ordained that the banal electric tramcars shall
take with them into side streets the blighting vulgarity of their
whizzing bustle. At the entrance to the Paseo the cars turn humbly into
side turnings running parallel with this monarch of highways.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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