M. de Bourbourg fitly closes his interesting volumes—­from which we have here given a resume of only the opening chapters—­with a remarkable prophecy, made in the court of Yucatan by the high-priest of Mani.  According to the tradition, this pontiff, inspired by a supernatural vision, betook himself to Mayapan and thus addressed the king:—­“At the end of the Third Period, [A.D. 1518-1542,] a nation, white and bearded, shall come from the side where the sun rises, bearing with it a sign, [the cross,] which shall make all the Gods to flee and fall.  This nation shall rule all the earth, giving peace to those who shall receive it in peace and who will abandon vain images to adore an only God, whom these bearded men adore.” (Vol.  II. p. 594.) M. de Bourbourg does not vouch for the pure origin of the tradition, but suggests that the wise men of the Quiche empire already saw that it contained in itself the elements of destruction, and had already heard rumors of the wonderful white race which was soon to sweep away the last vestiges of the Central American governments.

[Note.—­We cannot but think that our correspondent receives the traditions reported by M. de Bourbourg with too undoubting faith.  Some of them seem to us to bear plain marks of an origin subsequent to the Spanish Conquest, and we suspect that others have been considerably modified in passing through the lively fancy of the Abbe.  Even Ixtlilxochitl, who, as a native and of royal race, must have had access to all sources of information, and who had the advantage of writing more than three centuries ago, seems to have looked on the native traditions as extremely untrustworthy.  See Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Mexico, Vol.  I. p. 12, note.—­Edd.]

* * * * *

ROGER PIERCE

The Man With Two Shadows.

“There is ever a black spot in our sunshine.”  Carlyle.

The sky is gray with unfallen sleet; the wind howls bitterly about the house; relentless in its desperate speed, it whirls by green crosses from the fir-boughs in the wood,—­dry russet oak-leaves,—­tiny cones from the larch, that were once rose-red with the blood of Spring, but now rattle on the leafless branches, black and bare as they.  No leaf remains on any bough of the forest, no scarlet streamer of brier flaunts from the steadfast rocks that underlie all verdure, and now stand out, bleak and barren, the truths and foundations of life, when its ornate glories are fled away.  The river flows past, a languid stream of lead; a single crow, screaming for its mate, flaps heavily against the north-east gale, that enters here also and lifts the carpet in long waves across the floor, whiffles light eddies of ashes in the chimney-corner, and vainly presses on door and window, like a houseless spirit shrieking and pining for a shelter from its bodiless and helpless unrest in the elements.