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Show ' H 1 S T 0 R. Y 0 F M E X I C O, fight; which is the beginning and which is the end of any hifiorical painting. It cannot be denied that this method of expreffing things was imperfect:, perplexed, and equivocal; but praife is due to the attempt of thofe people to perpetuate the memory of events, and to their indufiry in fupplying, though imperfeCtly, the want of letters, which it is probable they would have invented, in their progt;efs to refinement, had their empire been of longer duration; at leafi they would have abridged and improv~d their paintings by the multiplication of characters. Their paintings ought not to be con!idered as a regular full hifiory, but only as monuments and aids of tradition. We cannot exprefs too il:rongly the care which parents and matl:ers took to infiruCl: their children and pupils in the hifiory of the nation. They made them learn · fpeeches and difco urfes, which th ey could not exprefs by the pencil ; they put the events of their ancefl:ors into verfe, and taught them to fi.ng them. This tradition difpelled the doubts, and undid the ambiguity which paintings alone might have occafi'oned, and by the afilftance of thoie monuments perpet_uated the memory of their heroes, and of virtuous examples, their mythology, their rites, their laws, and .their cufl:oms. N:or did that people make ufe only of tradition, of paintings, and famgs, to preferve the memory of events, but allo of threads of dif7' 'ferent colours, and differently knotted, called by ·the Peruvians ~ipu, and by the Mexi~a ns Nepohua!tzitzin. This curio us method of the reprefentation of things, however much ufcd in Peru, does not appear to have been employed in the province of Anahuac, if not .in the moil: early ages; for no traces of fuch monuments are now to be found. Boturini lays, that after the mofi diligent fearch, he, with di~liculty., found one ,in a place of Tlafcala, the threads of which were already · wafied and confumed by .time. If thofe who peopled South America ever paifed the country ·of Anahuac, they poflibly might have left there' ~this art, which was afterwards abandoned for that of painting, intro. duced by the Toltecas,, or f0me other nation fl:ill more ancient. After the Spaniards communicated the ufe of letters to them, feve. ral able natives of Mexico, Tezcuco, and Tlafcala, wrote their hillo: ries partly in Spanifh, and partly in an elegant Mexican fl:yle, which G g g z hiilories 4ri nooK vu. .. |