Valasquez de Leon exclaimed,-"Why waste more time! let us seize him, or stab him to the heart." His fierce voice and gesture terrified Montezuma; and abandoning himself to fate, he complied with their request. The emperor was carried by his astonished and afflicted officers, all bathed in tears, to the Spanish quarters."

66

The son of Montezuma was brought to trial for opposing the Spaniards, condemned by court martial, and burned alive.

"Cortez, during this scene, ordered the emperor to be fettered. His attendants, speechless with horror, held up the fetters on his legs to lighten them, while the disconsolate Monarch broke out into loud lamentations and complaints. After the execution, the fetters were removed.

"Months were thus passing away, when Montezuma, with groans and tears, in the presence of his chief subjects, acknowledged himself a vassal of the king of Castile; on which there was a sullen murmur among the nobles."

"After various events, the Mexicans attacked the palace.

Cortez induced Montezuma to shew himself in hopes of appeasing the tumult; to which he assented, and advanced to the battlements in his royal robes. The Mexicans, at the sight of their revered sovereign, prostrated themselves, and the weapons fell from their hands—every tongue was mute. The Emperor used many arguments to make them cease hostilities. A murmuring was heard, and threats ensued, followed by flights of arrows and vollies of stones. Two arrows wounded the unfortunate Monarch,-a stone struck him on his temple and he fell. The Mexicans fled with horror. Montezuma was carried to his apartment, and Cortez hastened to console him. The unhappy Monarch during his confinement, feeling how low he had sunk, in a transport of indignation tore the bandages from his wounds,

obstinately refusing nourishment, and rejecting with disdain the solicitations of the Spaniards to embrace the Christian faith."

"Great troubles followed the death of the Emperor. His brother was raised to the throne, but he very soon died of the small-pox, which was not known there till the Europeans arrived. Guatimozin, nephew and son-in-law of Montezuma, was elevated to the fatal dignity. The Spaniards, on their return to Mexico, were enraged at finding so little treasure; some even suspected that Cortez and his confidants had appropriated a large portion to their own use. Imagining that Guatimozin might have concealed some of the treasure, Cortez, without any reverence for the virtues and misfortunes of the last monarch of the Mexicans, ordered that he should be tortured. The unhappy king bore the torments with inconceivable fortitude. His principal friend was also a fellow-sufferer upon another rack: overpowered by anguish, he turned a dejected eye towards his master, as if to implore permission to reveal what he knew. His weakness was checked by a look of authority and scorn. "Am I reposing on a bed of flowers?" said the Sovereign; which awed him into silence, and he expired."

The cruel heart of Cortez was ashamed of this horrid scene; and the Monarch was released from his tortures-and reserved for new indignities and sufferings. At length in

He died about the end of June, 1520, after seven months imprisonment, in the eighteenth year of his reign, and the fifty-first of his age.

Three of the sons of Montezuma had been cut off in the contest with the Spaniards. The most distinguished of the survivors was Johualicahuatzin, or Don Pedro Montezuma, from whom descended the Counts Montezuma and Tula. From the emperor Montezuma's beautiful daughter, Tecuichpetzin, are descended the noble houses of Cana Montezuma and Andreda Montezuma in Spain.

1525, on a slight suspicion that Guatamozin had formed a scheme to shake off the Spanish yoke, Cortez, without a trial, ordered the unhappy Monarch, together with the kings of Tescuco and Tlacopan-those who were looked up to by the Mexicans with reverence, scarcely inferior to that paid to their Gods--to be ignominiously hanged! Thus did destruction crown a conquest which had been achieved by 'fraud and force;' and thus ended the Mexican Empire.'— Clavegero, book 13. Hist. Reseaches, chap. vii. p. 336.

APPENDIX.

(Page 50.)

NAMES AND TITLES OF THE CREATOR.

NONE of the names and titles by which the Creator has manifested His character, are without precise signification and special reference; and of this kind of knowledge the sacred writers knew the deep value.

For the information of young readers, it may be useful to remark that the term YEHOVAH, expressive of AM-WASSHALL BE, is an exception to the genius of the Hebrew language, which, recognizing only the past and the future, leaves the present tense to be mentally supplied. "And God spake unto Moses and said unto him, I am (Yehovah). I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by my name (God Almighty,) but by my name Yehovah was I not known to them; and also I established my covenant with them to give them the LAND of Canaan, the LAND of their pilgrimage wherein they were strangers: and I have moreover heard the groaning of the children of Israel whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered My Covenant." Exod. vi. 1-5. It was therefore by the Name Yehovah that the Creator announced Himself as the Saviour and Redeemer