sectarian views; but, in the case before us, we are left alone with facts and probability to establish our conclusions, which we are not at liberty to warp by prejudice, or the favor of others' opinions. There are found among the ruins of Palenque, of Copan, and of several places of ancient grandeur in Central America, specimens of arts so closely resembling the Egyptian, the Carthaginian, the Romans, the Grecian, and the East Indian, that many have thought the people of each have, at different times, visited America, and instructed the Tultiques in useful and ornamental knowledge. Some suppose that the Romans remained just long enough to afford the Tultecans the knowledge of building their dykes, aqueducts, bridges, etc., and then to have returned to the eastern continent. The Hindoos must also, for the same reason, have instructed these American people in their religion and their arts; and so with those of some other nations. Thus it was, according to this hypothesis, but a trifling affair for the people of transatlantic fame to make visits to this continent for the purpose of giving its ancient inhabitants the requisite information for the construction of their edifices, etc. A singular difficulty would seem, however, to stand in the way of this supposition; and this is, that the ruins of these arts themselves indicate a greater antiquity than those of the eastern world, in the execution of which these sage school-masters are supposed to have acquired all their skill. May it not be equally probable, from this view of the subject, that the Americans instructed the people of Asia in a knowledge of the arts, sciences, and mysteries, of which their history so much boasts? The fact is conclusive, that the Tultiques, were highly proficient in both the arts and sciences, at an immeasurably distant period of time; even more so, as far as we are enabled to learn, than most nations of men on the other continent. The science of astronomy, by which this people was enabled to calculate time with a precision, which, as is thought, it is the pride of modern science alone to claim, need only be cited as evidence in point. Their knowledge of the useful and ornamental arts was not behind that of any other people of the earliest times, as we shall see by reference to the ruins which, for thousands of years, have survived them. Were we, in fact, to compare that knowledge, as indicated by those ruins, with that of the Chaldeans, and other remote people, as evinced by theirs, we could not hesitate to return a uniformly favorable decision for the great antiquity of the Tultiques. It is unhesitatingly admitted, that the Mexicans derived all their knowledge of art and of science from these people, whom they succeeded; and it is equally certain, that they were a barbarous and ignorant race of men, long after the extinction of the Tultique nation. Admitting the Mexican people, then, to have had their origin