women during the same time of battle. The Aztecs were suffering from many evils during the conflict when the Spaniards strove, for long in vain, to take from them their beautiful city. The plague of small-pox was abroad, brought to the Aztecs by a dying negro in the train of Cortés; and that unknown negro proved the most terrible foe of the Aztec nation. Yet, even though they were now dying by hundreds in the streets, while their thinning ranks were being swept by the fire-speaking tubes that weaponed the army of their foes, they fought fiercely on, and their women gave them noble aid and incitement. They stood by the side of the warrior in battle, strung his bow, filled his quiver, gave him fresh stones for his sling; they nursed the sick through all the horrors of the loathsome disease which had fastened upon them; and they did yet more, for they kept their hearts high with hope and determination when even the noblest warriors failed of these things, and so they upheld the hands of Guatemozin, their beloved but most unhappy chief, and upbore the standard of their country to the very end. It was all in vain; the Mexico of that civilization was doomed; but none the less did the women of that day, both pagan and Christian, display qualities which in the fusion of the races in after years should have borne noble fruit. It is not the purpose of this work to trace the history of any country, save at the points where such history touches the universal story of woman; and so there exists no obligation to present to the reader even the most fragmentary sketch of the progress of Mexico from the rule of the barbarism of the Aztecs to that of the civilization of the Spaniards. The latter brought with them their own feminine culture, and for long held it apart from the conditions existing among the indigenous inhabitants of the land. Among the women of Spain who took up their abode in Mexico there are names which lend themselves to story; but their histories touched Mexico only as a scenic background, and, moreover, it would be an unfruitful digression to attempt to find any feminine history in the days of Spain's first occupation of Anahuac. The vice-roys held their courts with little less than regal splendor, and it cannot be that those courts were unadorned by the presence of women of high claim to remembrance; yet there comes down to us no name of those days touched with the halo of romance or in any way made worthy of memoir. Doubtless the ladies of the viceregal courts flaunted as costly attire and held themselves as haughtily as their sisters in the court of Spain itself; but they passed away and left no trace, even as an influence. For years of varying fortunes but of constant prosperity in high places, Spain held Mexico under dominance, until the oppression of the lower classes began to bear its invariable fruit, and there came first threats, and then acts of rebellion. There was revolution after