Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1885-06-08

In living art, leading off from
these galleries, where both amateurs
and professionals are at their work.
Both the taste and capacity of the
Mexican people for music are
proverbial. No less controlling is
their passion for art. Between the
Hotel Hurbide and the plaza mayor is
an art store, in the windows of which
some attractive pieces are exposed
to view. Pass this place at any
hour of day or evening and the side
walk is literally blockaded with a
crowd of men and women, attracted
to the, spot by the beautiful display
from within. And what crowd!
1t is made up largely of the poor
and ragged Of both sexes. Here is
the peon in his cotton shirt and
trousers, his only covering, and
these often minus sleeve and part
of leg f; the bravo from the foot
hills in similar garb, with perhaps,
the addition of blanket; the Indi-
an woman with her inevitable rebozo
and papoose, and for dress strip
of fannel wrapped around her lower
limbs and fastened at her waist and
all of them barefoot. Here stands
this unlettered. half civilized mass
of human beings, held by the magic
of that homage which the. love
of the beautiful, whether found in
art or nature, never fails to inspire.
AS the stranger turns often into the
street to pass this throng, for he
goes often to the plaza, he cannot
help paying the tribute of his admi-
ration to the innate sense of the
beautiful in man-so uplifting in its
influence, and here manifestly so
strong in these untutored children of
nature. He cannot help saying to
himself: ''If music hath charms to
soothe the savage breast" no less is
there a power divine in the painters
brush and sculptor's chisel.
'sWhen man from the garden driven
fugitive before his makers wrath,
An angel left her place in heaven
And crossed the wanderers sunless path:
Twas art, sweet art' 4
Many other places will also be Wis
tied; such as the national palace,
where will be found the President and
heads of departments. The national
congress in the old Theatre Hatrbide.
The national library, an immense old
building occupied before the confis-
cation by the Augustine friars, but
now well filed with rare old books,
and modern ones too, mostly in the
Spanish language; though there is a
fair line of authors in English, with
whom the solitary American joyfully
sits down, as with old friends. The
visitor also hunts out the post office,
which is room about Is feet wide
by 80 long and in which are just as
many boxes as there are letters in the
alphabet; where letters are mail
ed to any point in the republic at
ten cents the half ounce, and where
also list of all letters received, eX-
cept those distributed under the car
rier system, is posted every day on a
bulletin board and seldom numbers
more than thirty or forty. The old
inquisition building is also visited,
where the torture of the body was the
favorite correction for the spirit; but
now, still attending TO the body, it is
the seat of the national college of
medicine, in which there are over two
hundred students, the old council hall
being used as dissecting room, out
of respect, probably, for its terrible
traditions. So, too, will the nOche
triste tree be visited, an immense old
cypress enclosed with an iron
fence, under which Cortez slept the
night after his expulsion from the
city, in 1920; on that terrible day fol-
lowing the death of the imprisoned
Montezuma, when the uprising was
such as to almost annihilate his army.
And the Canal de Vigo which extends
to the lakes and leads past the fa-
nous floating gardens. And the
shrine, also, of Gaudaloupe, a mag
nifcent cathedral about three miles
from the city, erected to the Virgin
Mary who was decreed by Clement
VII the patron saint of Mexico, be-
cause of her appearance to Mexi-
can shepherd at this point and her re-
quest that a church be there built, and
leaving, as she departed, the impress
sion of her image on his serapa. And
the holy way, also, leading from the
city to this shrine, over which the de-
vout were wont to 60 before its con-
fiscation and occupation as a road
bed by the Mexican Railway, on their
knees-especially on the anniversary
of the apparition, Dec. II. The blan-
ket bearing this miraculous image of
the madonna is preserved and hangs
above the high altar in the cathedral.
Your correspondent would not be un-
derstood as vouching for the correct
ness of the likeness, nor as pretend
ing any knowledge of the system of
photography by which it was taken.
But the blanket is there with the inn
age upon it and it is claimed that the
establishment of this shrine, and the
story of this miraculous apparition,
made as it was to an Indian, was very
helpful in the conversion of the In
dian tribes. These, and many other
objects of absorbing interest will re-