The Toultecs, as has already been said, exhibited a high state of civilization, and an astonishing knowledge of the arts and sciences, at the earliest periods of their history. Their government was the most permanent, efficient, and happy; and to them have all succeeding nations acknowledged their indebtedness for their knowledge of the arts, and of agriculture. They were familiar with the working of metals, cutting gems, with hieroglyphical paintings, etc.; and in their divisions of time, they were much more perfect than the Greeks or Romans. 'But where,' inquires a distinguished writer, 'is the source of that cultivation? Where is the country from which the Toultecs and Mexicans issued?' If we have no evidence that they came from the United States, nor from Asia, is not the query solved, by supposing that they were the Palencians? dispersed by the pestilence which deprived them of their eighth and last monarch, with the bulk of the Toultec people. The magnificent arts still presented to the curious traveller in Mexico, are the work of this people, and they exhibit a degree of skill, industry, and intellect, which astonish those of our times. But they differed from all others in these arts. Where then shall we find their analogue? Did they come from China, as De Guignes would prove from the Chinese annals, subsequent to 458? Horn, in his 'De Originibus Americanis,' and M. Scherver, would make this by no means difficult, nay, extremely probable. They 'might have been a part of those Hiongnoux, who, according to the Chinese historians, emigrated under Punon, and were lost in the north of Siberia; or, were they the Indians of North America? The pastoral character of the Toultecs resembled that of the Asiatics, and their arts those of Egypt; but they cultivated no other gramina than maize, while the Asiatic tribes cultivated various cereal gramina, at the earliest periods of their history. To the Chinese, and particularly the Japanese, they bore a striking similarity, so far as regards the state of civilization; yet, in their facial and cranial characteristics, they differed materially. On the whole, it is much more reasonable to suppose that the people of whom we are now speaking, were of the Mongol race, than that the Palencians were any particular race now known.