To the antiquary and student of ethnology on this continent there are few subjects more interesting than those early industrial arts, which, better than any thing else, illustrate the civilization of the Aztecs, and their rude neighbors, the aborigines of the more northern parts of the country. An attempt is made in the following pages to define, in certain respects, the extent, and justly to represent the character, of those efforts, made before the Discovery, and repeated, with more or less uniformity, by portions of the American races until the present time. I have copied from the great work of Lord Kingsborough on Mexican Antiquities, four uncouth figures, of which the originals are native drawings sent to Spain by Antonio de Mendoza, the successor of Cortes, and first viceroy of New Spain. It will be confessed that few things could give us a more correct impression of the condition and character of the peoples subdued by Cortes and Pizarro than we may derive from these pictures. [Illustration: Aztec Goldsmith at work. From Mendoza's Collection.] In this drawing the artist has represented a workman in the act of soldering or annealing a piece of plate. Except the rude style in which the native limners portrayed the human figure, the cut is a fac-simile of Pharaonic profiles of the same class of workmen, and of modern goldsmiths of Africa, Hindustan, Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, and Asia generally. The small portable furnace, the blowpipe, the position of the operator, the scantiness of his apparel, and the absence of any bench, are common to all; the only observable difference is in the apron (suspended by long shoulder-straps) of the American, who, in this respect, seems to have advanced beyond his brethren of the other hemisphere. Had the draughtsman possessed the skill of a modern artist, and painted the tools and processes used, in fusing the metal, in spreading it out into plates, working it into shape, and chasing in the ornaments, in drawing wire, and fabricating the famous old Panama chains, &c., many other problems of Aztec economy and art would have been solved. The smiths of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, were expert in the use of the blowpipe; and this is not to be wondered at, if, as early Spanish writers report, the bellows was unknown among them. In specimens of their industry which are extant the soldering rivals any thing executed in modern workshops, and seams often challenge and sometimes defy the keenest scrutiny to detect them. Native smiths still use the pipe.