One of the most curious of the Aztec picture-writings is in the Bodleian Library, and in fac-simile in Lord Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico.  In it are shown, in a series of little pictures, the education of Mexican boys and girls, as prescribed by law.  The child four days old is being sprinkled with water, and receiving its name.  At four years old they are to be allowed one tortilla a meal, which is indicated by a drawing above their heads, of four circles representing years, and one cake; and the father sends the son to carry water, while the mother shows the daughter how to spin.  A tortilla is like an oat-cake, but is made of Indian corn.

At seven years old the boy is taken to learn to fish, while the girl spins; and so on with different occupations for one year after another.  At nine years old the father is allowed to punish his son for disobedience, by sticking aloe-points all over his naked body, while the daughters only have them stuck into their hands; and at eleven years old, both boy and girl were to be punished by holding their faces in the smoke of burning capsicums.

At fifteen the youth is married by the simple process of tying the corner of his shirt to the corner of the bride’s petticoat (thus literally “splicing” them, as my companion remarked).  And so on; after scenes of cutting wood, visiting the temples, fighting and feasting, we come to the last scene of all, headed “seventy years,” and see an old man and woman reeling about helplessly drunk with pulque; for drunkenness, which was severely punished up to that age, was tolerated afterwards as a compensation for the sorrows and infirmities of the last period of life.

Astrological charts formed a large proportion of these picture-writings.  Here, as elsewhere, we may trace the origin of astrology.  The signs of the days and years were represented, for convenience sake, by different animals, and objects, like the signs of the Zodiac which we still retain.  The signs remained after the history of their origin was lost; and then—­what more natural than to imagine that the symbols handed down by their wise ancestors had some mysterious meaning, connected with the days and years they stood for; and then, that a man’s destiny had to do with the names of the signs that “prevailed” at his birth?

There is little to be seen here or elsewhere, of one kind of work in which the Mexicans excelled perhaps more than in any other, the goldsmith’s work.  Where are the calendars of solid gold and silver—­as big as great wheels, and covered with hieroglyphics, and the cups and collars, the golden birds, beasts, and fishes?  The Spaniards who saw them record how admirable their workmanship was, and they were good judges of such matters.  Benvenuto Cellini saw some of these things, and was filled with admiration.  They have all gone to the melting-pot centuries ago!  How important the goldsmith’s trade was accounted in old times is shown by a strange Aztec law.