that there is none righteous, no, not one. If this is not true, Divine grace is unnecessary.

II. THOUGH BUT A YOUTH, HE WAS THE SUBJECT OF THE CONVERTING AND RENEWING GRACE OF GOD.

To Divine grace there are no limits, either as to character, or condition, or age. Very young persons have been converted. Such are constantly being saved. Scripture refers us to many such. It was so, happily, with our friend. At the age of about fifteen he became enlightened, and savingly impressed, and his convictions soon terminated in a sound conversion of heart and life to God. He then put on the Lord Jesus Christ by baptism, made an open profession of religion, and became at once an honourable member of this Christian church. His personal piety possessed many beautiful traits. It was decided. He put his hand earnestly to the gospel plough. It was modest and humble-no exhibition of self or ostentation-no vain display. It was uniform. His path was like that of the opening morning, and his course was steady and onward, and upward, shining more and more unto perfect day. It was practical. His fear of God was apparent. His equity and truthfulness, and uprightness were conspicuous. His conversation was wise and profitable-never given to silly and untimely mirth, or vapid jesting, or levity. His religion was benevolent and benignant-goodness and kindness ruled his spirit. I never knew him to utter one railing accusation, or make one envious or uncharitable remark of any one. was pre-eminently distinguished for the charity that thinketh no evil. It was firm and decisive. He never dreamed of being half-hearted, or looking back-his resolve was, let others do as they may, I will serve the Lord. Free from dogmatizing, or suspicion of others, yet he was clear and decided, and thorough as to his own creed and principles. He was a lover of all good men, and breathed the atmosphere of the catholic and kind spirit of his Divine Master.

He

III.-THOUGH BUT A YOUTH, YET HE HAD MADE CONSIDERABLE PROGRESS IN THE ATTAINMENT OF KNOWLEDGE AND SELF CULTIVATION.

His opportunities were not numerous, nor his position in life very favourable, but he made the most of them. He read some of the best books on evangelical truth and practical piety; but especially he went to the great, deep mine of God's Word, and so read and studied and meditated therein, that he grew in the knowledge of God, and possessed the wisdom that is better than rubies.

His theological stores were considerable, and he had a correct view of truth in its beautiful harmony and just proportions. He held no distorted or eccentric notions. By his wise use of time, and his diligence in self improvement, he added to his talents other talents, and thus was a model to young men.

IV. THOUGH BUT A YOUTH, HE ENTERED ON VARIOUS BENEVOLENT

AND PIOUS COURSES OF ACTIVITY.

For his own sake, and to be an example to others, he early became a total abstainer from intoxicating drinks. I have no doubt this was a great help to his other studies and engagements.

For years he was an earnest and regular teacher in the Sabbath school. His labours in this field were eminently faithful and kind, and he was devoutly anxious for the salvation of the young. He carly became

a very acceptable preacher of the gospel. In this work he evinced great. modesty, and gave full proof, if life had been spared, that he would have been both attractive and useful. Not only did he often assist me in the usual services here, and preach to you, but for a considerable period he was the afternoon preacher of a neighbouring congregation. I had felt anxious that he should have had the advantage of a collegiate course of education for the work, but God evidently designed him to minister in the holier sanctuary above.

V.-THOUGH BUT A YOUTH, YET HE WAS THE SUBJECT OF SEVERE PHYSICAL AFFLICTION.

We usually connect youth with vigor and health, but it is not always so. For years he appeared the picture of handsome manly strength-a good form, a well-developed head, a pleasing countenance, and of active habits. All seemed to indicate a long and healthy life; but like the rapidly grown gourd of Jonah, there was the worm of disease at the root. My attention was soon drawn to the change in his appearance. His form became wasted, his face thin, and his whole aspect that of one rapidly hastening to the house appointed for all living. I invited him to come and converse with me, and I was almost overwhelmed when he told me his disease was pronounced to be "diabetes." I consulted with friends, and we agreed that he ought to try the hydropathic system. We cheerfully aided him to avail himself of the establishment and the invigorating air of Matlock; and here he stayed for several weeks. But alas! it was all in vain. There were temporary signs of improvement, but no abiding benefit, and he now sought to return to the bosom of his dear home, where he would have the kindly care of his beloved, and devoted, and pious parents. Thus the last months of his afflicted course were spent at Downton, Wilts., where it was still hoped that the salubrious air might yet benefit him.

VI. THOUGH BUT A YOUTH, YET HIE BECAME THE PREY OF THE

MORTAL ENEMY.

Ah, death claims all ages for his victims! the old and the young-the decrepit and the hale-the infirm and the blooming youth. How true, "Sixteen's as mortal as fourscore." Yes, death had sent before him his troops of invaders to sap the foundation, and to besiege the citadel; and now these having been battered and shaken, he came in person and took possession.

With respect to his death, I notice: 1.-The death of our dear friend was easy; the pains, and infirmities, and weakness of many months, had prepared the way for the last stroke. 2.-His death, after all, was sudden. It was thought he might linger on for months; and I had even anticipated seeing him in November next, but death came as a thief, stealthily, and when not expected. He had been worse for some days, but that day he had taken his morning meal, which he much enjoyed. He then reclined in an easy chair, and took up a book-the "Devotional Christian," and turned to the subject, "The Christian triumphing in the approach of death." His parents were in the rear of the house, when his sister called them to come in at once. They did so, but he was unable to speak to them. He leaned back in the chair; a tear stole down his cheek; he raised his eyes upwards, and, with his hands crossed fell sweetly into the arms of Jesus. Thus lived and died our beloved friend,

to whose end of earthly life and conflict we append the text, "He was but a youth." 3.-His death was safe, if true and earnest piety could make it so; if faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who has abolished death, could make it so if a devoted useful life, and patient enduring of affliction could make it so; if resting on the Rock of Ages, and looking only to an Almighty Saviour, could make it so. O yes, he lived a life of faith in Christ. He lived to the Lord; so that, doubtless, living and dying, he was the Lord's.

And, now for the application of the subject to the living. Being dead, he yet speaks to us. 1.-As to the importance of early piety. To seek God betimes; to remember the Creator in the days of youth; to be young disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

To save

2. He speaks to us of the sufficiency of the grace of God the young; to preserve the young; to bless the young with gifts and graces, and to endow them with a useful spirit; to labour for God, and do good even in early life. Young Christians, labour to be blessings to others, and thus serve both God and your generation.

3.—He warns us of the deceitfulness and vanity of this life. How obvious that there is no dependence on appearances, health, or vigor. Every man at his best estate is vanity-man is like a flower of the field.

4. And now, let his death, so early, admonish all. Be ready-evangelically, by faith in Christ alone; practically, by obedience and devotedness to God; spiritually, by holiness of heart and life. Be ready, every one; be ready in every place, and at all times, for we know not when the Son of Man may come.

THE TWO MODERN SYSTEMS OF PICTURE-WRITING.

THESE are the Aztec, or Mexican, and the North American Indian. The memorials we have of the first are of the most interesting description, but at the same time unhappily imperfect. Considering the many adventures the Mexican manuscripts have been the subjects of, the wonder is we have a single vestige of importance left. Surely no collection of documents ever met with so many misfortunes, was ever so pertinaciously doomed to destruction, ever manifested so much tenacity of life. The wild eyes of the Spaniards singled them out as soon as they entered the country. Their vividness attracted attention, their mystery excited suspicion, and perhaps the fondness shewn by the natives for them determined their destruction. Don Juan de Zumarraga, the first archbishop of Mexico, took the initiative in the work of destruction. Collecting all the choicest national treasures, he piled them in a heap in the market-place of Tlatelolco, and burnt them in triumph. The flames of that huge fire lit the eyes as well as the hearts of the soldiery with the passion for destruction; and wherever they could get at them, these literary memorials were barbarously desecrated and destroyed. The charts were sold for waste paper to tradesmen, and their total annihilation seemed inevitable. Some private person, however, whose name, had we the good fortune to know it, were, as deserving of immortal honour, as Zumarraga's of eternal execration, mourning the loss and mutilation of

THE TWO MODERN SYSTEMS OF PICTURE WRITING.

405

these documents, collected a large number and deposited them in the national archives. But for this unknown hero, Aztec civilization would have been as mythical as that of early Greece.

was in

One manuscript, the Mendoza Codex, seems to have remained entire notwithstanding all these perils; but a chequered fate store for it. Sent by the Marques de Mondejar, the Viceroy Mendoza, to Charles V., а few years subsequent to the conquest, the vessel that contained it was captured by a French cruiser, and the manuscript transferred to Paris. Hakluyt, then chaplain. of the English embassy in that city, purchased it, and from him it passed to the learned antiquary Purchas, was engraved by him in the third volume of his Pilgrimage, and soon after mysteriously disappeared. Robertson, the American historian, could find no trace of it, and something like a century from the time of its disappearance, it was turned up in the Bodleian library. Other copies-it was itself only a rough copy on coarse paper-and engravings are in existence, so that now we may fairly suppose its adventures to be terminated.

All our knowledge of Aztec picture-writing is derived from this Mendoza Codex. A second one, the Dresden Codex, several times attempted to be destroyed by fire by the children of the Giustiniani, its earliest possessors, exhibits an entirely different description of characters. They are unlike both the general Aztec paintings, and the bas-reliefs of the Palanque palaces; and although pronounced by Humboldt to be of Aztec origin, their interpretation is a matter of difficulty and uncertainty.

The same destructive causes which attended the MSS. themselves, as relentlessly as the Furies followed Orestes in Greek fable, did not entirely pass by the key to these pictures. A hundred years after the conquest a Texcucan historian could only find two old persons who could interpret them. Later still, not a single clue could be found as to their meaning. Borunda, however, aptly called by Prescott, the Mexican Champollion, eventually discovered the key to the entire system. It was carried to Spain in 1795, and is reported to be still in existence in that country, although no one seems to know where. We could have wished for its discovery on purely historical grounds. It might have assisted in forming a more reasonable theory of the origin of the Aztecs than that of their Hebrew descent, so enthusiastically grasped, and sturdily maintained by Lord Kingsborough, in his splendid work on Mexican Antiquities. But antiquarian industry has already made out amply sufficient to enable us, after this lengthy, but somewhat necessary preamble, to give a little insight into their pictorial system.

A Mexican manuscript is a collection of pictures in gaudy colours, containing the most grotesque and distorted figures conceivable, chiefly of human bodies, each picture seemingly, but not really, perfect in itself. Little skill is observable in the way of outline and finish; they have all the rough angularity of primitive art. The larger portion of these hieroglyphics necessarily consist of elementary signs, but with these are mixed many conventional ones, pure symbols, and occasional phonetic ones. Illustrations of all these classes will be seen as we proceed. The Mendoza Codex is divided into three parts. The first records the history of Mexico; the second is a tribute-roll, containing an account of the taxes paid into the royal treasury by conquered cities; and the

third embraces civil law and domestic polity. Each of their kings-for we will begin with the first part-has a different emblem indicative of his name, and around it his deeds are represented by appropriate pictures. A conqueror has a target near him ornamented with darts, and the rude outlines of a house, still farther from him, signify that he has subdued as many towns, or peoples, if there be human beings instead, as there are lances in the target. In the latter case, if he had put to death the chiefs of these tribes, their heads would be placed before him, each one being marked with the same signs, generally phonetic, as served to mark the name of his tribe. In each of these cases the date was indicated by their clever system of chronology. The individual life of the king was set forth in the decorations of his person. A band or sash across his chest, according to its length, breadth, and the peculiar signs upon it, not yet clearly made out, gave the number of his wives, and that of his children, with their sexes. Other pictures added the civil portion of his history, and any natural phenomenon of moment, as a plague, an earthquake, or a comet. To mark the commencement of his reign, the king and his distinguishing sign are placed opposite the particular year of which the hieroglyphic is enclosed in a square. On the margin numerous other squares and figures tell the length of his reign, and the year of the cycle in which he died. Their very admirable chronology enabled them not only to make a special distinction for the year, but to group the years into periods. A year, we premise, in the Aztec calendar, consisted of eighteen months of four weeks, or twenty days each, both months and days having proper hieroglyphical signs. This arrangement leaving over five days and six hours, these waste days, as they were called, being considered unlucky either for labour or religion, were spent in festivity and idleness, and the six hours were allowed to run for fifty-two years, when, as we insert the 29th of February in leap year, they intercalated twelve-and-a-half days. Beginning from a date soon after their migration from Aztlan, calculated as A.D. 1091, they determined upon fiftytwo years as a cycle. This they set forth hieroglyphically by a number of reeds bound by a string, from which the cycles were called sheafs or bundles. But this allowing them no minuter chronology, they seized upon four and thirteen as the factors of fifty-two, dividing the cycle into four smaller ones, each of which was again divided into thirteen parts. Each of these smaller cycles was distinguished by the figures of a rabbit, a reed, a flint, and a house, symbolical, it is supposed, of the four elements, air, water, fire, and earth. These figures were also repeated time after time in each period, and dots were used alongside them to assist in the distinction, beginning in each period at one, and continuing regularly up to thirteen. No two number of dots were thus prefixed to the same hieroglyphics, and by this excellent method, each year in a cycle had its particular number of dots, and to the experienced Aztec the accompanying sign at once determined the number of its division. Thus the rabbit, prefixed by one dot, specified the first year in the first smaller cycle, and the number of dots increasing gradually, and the four figures repeating themselves, this sign stood for the fifth, ninth, and thirteenth years. In the second indiction the reed was the first, and indicated the same years as the rabbit in the previous one. In the third and fourth divisions the flint and the house were each initial, and followed in the same order as