as is manifest from their abandonment of their native land and the intellectual luxuries of its university society, for the hardships, mental and physical, of a land to be reached by perils of a still strange sea.
Doubtless the university of Mexico did something for science and art; but its usefulness was necessarily restricted to those who learned or inherited the Spanish tongue, and were able to acquire the preparatory education requisite for admission. That the area of its usefulness was very narrow, needs no demonstration. It must have had some independence and aggressive energy, for it was several times suppressed by the Spanish Government. In 1822 a visitor found the building very spacious, and the institution well endowed; "but at present there are very few students." Two hundred is the highest number mentioned as having been in attendance at any time. The library consisted then "of a small collection of books." In the city there were "a few book-shops," and the few books in them "were extravagantly dear."[1] "Under the colonial
- ↑ The book-stores are not numerous now; but books, and uncommon ones, are cheap. I found in a second-hand shop Tom Moore's Odes of
