ANTIQUITIES OF CENTRAL AMERICA.

THE

HE American remains-less superb, yet more marvelous, than those of Assyria-form altogether a modern topic. It is true that a collection of treatises larger than the library of Don Quixote has been compiled to discuss the original peopling of America, the pre-Columbian discoveries, the Canaanite, Phœnician, and Scythian immigrations; and the possible arrival of an antediluvian race. But until lately, the architectural antiquities of the Western world composed no part of the basis of such inquiries. Robertson, for instance, affirms in his confident way, that the ancient inhabitants were utterly rude, illiterate, and incapable of constructing any buildings better than huts, or raising any monuments nobler than mounds of earth. Since the doctor wrote, a rich and valuable field of investigation has been opened.

The works of an old race have been discovered; not so massive as the Egyptian, not so delicate as the Greek, but, nevertheless, works of beauty and power, with a history, still illegible, written on them, for no decipherer of their hieroglyphics has been found so learned as Champollion or so bold as Lepsius. The tumuli and fortifications in the valleys of the Mississippi and the Ohio, the mummies in the caverns of Kentucky, the inscriptions at Dighton, the ruined structures in Arkansas and Wisconsin, the fragments in Texas, and the wonderful and various groups of monuments in Central America and Mexico; mountains hewn into ranges of terraces, pyramids surmounted by temples, gigantic idols and altars covered with elaborate sculpture, with elegant utensils, for domestic and religious use, have revealed the existence, at a distant period, of a nation not polished or learned, yet ennobled by grandeur of idea and high artistic acquirement. Humboldt described a portion of these remains; but the greater part eluded his examination. Captain Dupaix's work, published in 1834, first attracted European attention to the subject. Del Rio and Felix Cabrera had indeed preceded him; but the announcement of their discoveries had excited little or no curiosity. Lord Kingsborough afterward published an ambitious book at £80 per copy; but the matter was not original, and the book was, to the general public, al

most as inaccessible as Central America itself.

The travels and researches of Stephens and Catherwood, who opened the way to many followers, have certainly added much information on this subject. Neither they nor any others, however, have instructed us in the mystery of those American ruins. They are still the dumb sepulchers of the antique civilization which reared them. Petra and Pæstum are at last intelligible, but Uxmal and Palenque are still free quarters for antiquarian dogmatism and poetical conjecture. Dupaix believed them to be antediluvian, because he found some colossal images buried in the earth! This earth he cleared away, and in less than thirty years these memorials of Noah's ancestors were buried to a greater depth than before. Again, they have been ascribed to a Cyclopean, to a Greek, to a Roman origin; but these suppositions have given way because nothing of a European type is discoverable in the conceptions or workmanship of the artists of ancient America. To connect them with colonists from China and Japan is more safe, because these countries are scarcely known; but is it logical to find analogies between what is known in one part of the world and what is unknown in another? To the Hindú monuments they have certainly little likeness, because they have no excavations, or enlargements of natural caverns, and the style and subjects of sculpture belong to quite another order. The pyramidal form has suggested an Egyptian derivation; but in America the pyramids are mere solid masses of earth or masonry. They never stand alonethey are often natural eminences faced with stone-and each one bears a temple on its summit. The vast quarried masses used in Egyptian architecture are never found in America, the only specimens being the idols and altars, which are almost all monolithic. Some vague resemblance may be traced in the bassreliefs, but the hieroglyphics are radically dissimilar.

Mr. Stephens, indeed, was unwilling to search for the origin of these works in any period so remote. He urges several circumstances against the theory of their immemorial age. Wooden beams, for example, are found serving as lintels, and perfectly undecayed. Wood, it is true, has been found in Egypt solid and sound

after three thousand years; but it was never exposed to the air, or employed in building, except in clamps, connecting two stones. The climate in America, damp and destructive to timber, encouraging rank vegetation and the rapid growth of trees, which in many places have burst through the masonry, render it improbable that the wooden lintels could last so long. Mr. Stephens, in fact, points out the monuments as the work of the people whom the Spaniards found, or of their not very remote progenitors. Many accounts describe them as then being erect and entire; and it is thought that the barbarous havoc of the conquerors, in their search for treasure, produced their overthrow. The discovery of one or two images of pure gold incited them to this devastation. One striking contrast between the American and the Egyptian ruins has been sternly insisted on; but it was a contrast inevitable from the nature of the two countries, and supplies no argument to either side of the discussion. On the banks of the Nile the bright ruins stand, near no shadows but their own, glowing in every tint of the sky, visible afar, reared like visions on the "lone and level waste." In Mexico, Chiapas and Yucatan they are buried in forests! their walls are saddened by stains of damp, vegetation chokes their passages, and the wayfarer may stand one hundred feet from the ruins of a great city without perceiving where one stone stands upon another. A screen, entangled and fantastic, droops along the colonnade of trees; leaves and brilliant flowers, with birds as bright, clinging and fluttering among them, are trained into an impervious network, so that the traveler, if the way is known to him, must break through these luxuriant defenses before he can see the tall solemn idols, the quaintly-wrought altars, the walls high but broken, the confusion of beauty and ruin that lies within the echo of his voice.

The figures of animals-monkeys, crocodiles, elephants, and birds—are frequently distinguishable in the American sculptures, besides those of men and women, apparently of different ranks, and exhibiting a great variety of costumes. Death's heads are common, with crowds of emblematical forms; but these are seldom grotesque, and never abominable, as in New-Zealand and India, nor is the sub

ject often of a martial kind. Religion and loyalty appear to be the sentiments displayed. The carving is usually fine, both in the masonry and sculpture, and looks as if iron instruments had been employed, though none have been found. Arrow-headed chisels of very hard greenstone were the only implements discovered by Mr. Stephens. The altars and idols are nearly all on a gigantic scale, most intricately wrought in bass-reliefs of endless variety, but seldom with an attempt to represent the whole human figure. That great riches must have been possessed by the founders of these structures, and that great numbers of laborers were employed in their erection, are shown by their extent; one collection of ruins, combining to complete a single plan, being spread over an area nearly equal to that of the great Pyramid of Ghizeh. The form of the arch is never found, corridors as well as chambers being roofed with overlapping stones, smoothed to a surface with cement as hard and durable as the Roman. The same material was also used for floors. Very fine stucco, laid somewhat thickly on the walls, is painted in colors so good as to remain vivid after centuries of exposure in a moist climate. Red earthenware of baked clay, highly polished, and terra-cottas of graceful and classical outline-among which the favorite tripod form often occurs-were discovered containing human bones, perhaps relics of sacrifices. An immense command of mechanical power must also have been possessed by the builders, since the quarries which supplied stone for these erections were often at a considerable distance, and enormous monoliths were raised to the tops of lofty hills.

It would not be more interesting to discover in what way the nation that has left these monuments was cultivated to the use of such arts, than to ascertain how it was that their works were suddenly checked their civilization paralyzed. Evidently they were stopped in full career; for the chiseled blocks are lying at the bottom or on the edges of quarries, or half-way to their destination; some of the sculptures are unfinished, and there are many other signs that the race was laboring when its hour of ruin arrived.

We have thus given, in outline, the important results of Mr. Stephens's explorations.

THE

THE CRUSADES.

THE fourth Crusade, as connected with popular feeling, requires little or no notice. At the death of Saladin, which happened a year after the conclusion of his truce with Richard of England, his vast empire fell to pieces. His brother Saif Eddin, or Saphaddin, seized upon Syria, in the possession of which he was troubled by the sons of Saladin. When this intelligence reached Europe, the Pope, Celestine III., judged the moment favorable for preaching a new Crusade. But every nation in Europe was unwilling and cold toward it. The people had no ardor, and kings were occupied with more weighty | matters at home. The only monarch of Europe who encouraged it was the Emperor Henry of Germany, under whose auspices the Dukes of Saxony and Bavaria took the field at the head of a considerable force. They landed in Palestine, and found anything but a welcome from the Christian inhabitants. Under the mild sway of Saladin, they had enjoyed repose and toleration, and both were endangered by the arrival of the Germans. They looked upon them in consequence as overofficious intruders, and gave them no encouragement in the warfare against Saphaddin. The result of this Crusade was even more disastrous than the last; for the Germans contrived not only to imbitter the Saracens against the Christians of Judea, but to lose the strong city of Jaffa, and cause the destruction of ninetenths of the army with which they had quitted Europe. And so ended the fourth Crusade.

The fifth was more important, and had a result which its projectors never dreamed of no less than the sacking of Constantinople, and the placing of a French dynasty upon the imperial throne of the eastern Cæsars. Each succeeding pope, however much he may have differed from his predecessors on other points, zealously agreed in one, that of maintaining by every possible means the papal ascendency. No scheme was so likely to aid in this endeavor as the Crusades. As long as they could persuade the kings and nobles of Europe to fight and die in Syria, their own sway was secured over the minds of men at home. Such being their object, they never inquired whether a Crusade was or was not likely to be successful,

whether the time were well or ill chosen, or whether men and money could be procured in sufficient abundance. Pope Innocent III. would have been proud if he could have bent the refractory monarchs of England and France into so much submission. But John and Philip Augustus were both engaged. Both had deeply offended the Church, and had been laid under her ban, and both were occupied in important reforms at home; Philip in bestowing immunities upon his subjects, and John in having them forced from him. The emissaries of the pope therefore plied them in vain; but as in the first and second Crusades, the eloquence of a powerful preacher incited the nobility, and through them a certain portion of the people; Foulque, Bishop of Neuilly, an ambitious and enterprising prelate, entered fully into the views of the court of Rome, and preached the Crusade wherever he could find an audience. Chance favored him to a degree he did not himself expect, for he had in general found but few proselytes, and those few but cold in the cause. Theobald, Count of Champagne, had instituted a grand tournament, to which he had invited all the nobles from far and near. Upward of two thousand knights were present with their retainers, besides a vast concourse of people to witness the sports. In the midst of the festivities Foulque arrived upon the spot, and conceiving the opportunity to be a favorable one, he addressed the multitude in eloquent language, and passionately called upon them to enrol themselves for the new Crusade. The Count de Champagne, young, ardent, and easily excited, received the cross at his hands. The enthusiasm spread rapidly. Charles, Count of Blois, followed the example; and of the two thousand knights present, scarcely one hundred and fifty refused. The popular phrensy seemed on the point of breaking out as in the days of yore. The Count of Flanders, the Count of Bar, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Marquis of Montferrat, brought all their vassals to swell the train, and in a very short space of time an effective army was on foot, and ready to march to Palestine.

The dangers of an overland journey were too well understood, and the Crusaders endeavored to make a contract with some of the Italian states to convey them over in their vessels. Dandolo, the aged