[1.  Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. iii, p. 73.]

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yet believe that the blood-royal differs in some of its constituents from the blood of the common people

     “What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster
     Sink in the ground? "

In the Aztec legends there were four ages, or suns, as they were termed.  The first terminated, according to Gama, in a destruction of the people of the world by hunger; the second ended in a destruction by winds; in the third, the human race was swept away by fire, and the fourth destruction was by water.  And in the Hindoo legends we find the same series of great cycles, or ages:  one of the Shastas teaches that the human race has been destroyed four times—­first by water, secondly by winds, thirdly the earth swallowed them, and lastly fire consumed them.[1]

I come now to a most extraordinary record: 

In the prayer of the Aztecs to the great god Tezcatlipoca, “the supreme, invisible god,” a prayer offered up in time of pestilence, we have the most remarkable references to the destruction of the people by stones and fire.  It would almost seem as if this great prayer, noble and sublime in its language, was first poured out in the very midst of the Age of Fire, wrung from the human heart by the most appalling calamity that ever overtook the race; and that it was transmitted from age to age, as the hymns of the Vedas and the prayers of the Hebrews have been preserved, for thousands of years, down to our own times, when it was carefully transcribed by a missionary priest.  It is as follows: 

“O mighty Lord, under whose wing we find defense and shelter, thou art invisible and impalpable, even as night and the air.  How can I, that am so mean and worthless, dare to appear before thy majesty?  Stuttering

[1.  Brinton’s “Myths of the New World,” p. 232.]

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and with rude lips I speak, ungainly is the manner of my speech as one leaping among furrows, as one advancing unevenly; for all this I fear to raise thine anger, and to provoke instead of appeasing thee; nevertheless, thou wilt do unto me as may please thee.  O Lord, thou hast held it good to forsake us in these days, according to the counsel that thou hast as well in heaven as in hades,—­alas for us, in that thine anger and indignation has descended upon us in these days; alas in that the many and grievous afflictions of thy wrath have overgone, and swallowed us up, coming down even as stones, spears, and arrows upon the wretches that inhabit the earth!—­this is the sore pestilence with which we are afflicted and almost destroyed.  O valiant and all-powerful Lord, the common people are almost made an end of and destroyed; a great destruction the ruin and pestilence already make in this nation; and, what is most pitiful of all, the little children, that are innocent and understand nothing, only to play