forces, who, curious to say, fought under the banner of the Virgin Los Remedios.

Poor Hidalgo was captured by the Spaniards and shot in 1811; but his followers in whom he had aroused much enthusiasm, continued the war, and, after eleven years' hard fighting, independence was accomplished, in 1821, under Iturbide; and Spanish Viceroys and their rule were abolished. Mexican presidents, nominated every four years by the plebiscite of the nation, took their place.

There is not much to see in the Cathedral, which has been despoiled of its silver and valuables (the golden frame of the Virgin was taken, but returned); so I made the ascent by a zigzag road to the shrine at the top of the hill.

Before entering the chapel, stop to look at the view; it will repay any amount of trouble taken in mounting the steep steps. The city, the lake and Chapultepec are within the range of a camera, if it could be so fixed as to avoid the roof of the Cathedral below you. Turn and enter the shrine at a little altar on the right are rude daubs of pictures representing miracles worked through the intervention of the Virgin-pious offerings in commemoration of a child saved from fire, a husband from lightning, a wife from a runaway train, a lady and gentleman from an overturn of a carriage, people rising from a bed of sickness, and such like some of them with the paint hardly dry.

The altar railing is of solid silver; this railing was, of all the sumptuous church fixtures throughout the land, alone spared by the Liberals. Its value must be immense ; pious Mexicans do not like to appraise it, for reasons best known

to themselves. The great gem, however, of this church is the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which she herself imprinted according to the legend-upon the tilma, or garment, of Juan Diego, the poor peasant, as a proof that she had appeared to him; this relic is hung over the high altar in a wrought-iron case and is only exposed on rare holidays. By especial grace I obtained a view of it. The tilma is a very coarse piece of woollen fabric; the colouring of the image is distinct, and may have been touched up from time to time. On a table at the door are copies of the picture in all sizes, and you see them in every Indian hut, every wayside shrine, in all the public offices, in every church-indeed in every place in the land, appropriate or inappropriate, as the case may be.

In an adjoining churchyard are some pretty tombs, and great prices are paid for interment in this sacred spot. Santa Anna rests here, and the names of the leading families of Mexico could be read on the marble on all directions.

After descending from the hill I visited the miraculous sulphur spring, said to cure everything; the church or dome which covers it was being redecorated at great expense at the time of my visit. The legend says that this spring of sulphur hydrogen gushed forth from a spot touched by one of the Virgin's feet. On the 12th of December every year (the anniversary of the apparition), thousands of natives from all parts of the country visit this shrine and the Church of Guadalupe. The name is familiar to many people as that of a town between Toledo and Trujillo in Spain, where there is a famous shrine to the Virgin.

There is always a longing in the minds of colonists to perpetuate the names of the country of their birth, and Guadalupe is no doubt an instance of this patriotic feeling on the part of the Spaniards; the Geronomite convent in Spain was at the time of the Conquest the richest and most venerated shrine in the old country, its celebrated figure of the Virgin, being believed to have been carved by St. Luke himself, and it was given by St. Gregory the Great to San Leandro for putting down Arianism. The figure was hidden and miraculously preserved during six centuries of Moorish invasion, and when brought to light was so venerated by the whole Spanish nation that the settlers in New Spain would delight in perpetuating the name of the shrine in their new home.

THE

CHRIST CHURCH, ALEXANDRIA

BISHOP MEADE

HE town of Alexandria was at first called Hunting Creek Warehouse, sometimes Belle Haven, and consisted of a small establishment at that place. Its growth was encouraged by successive acts of the Legislature, establishing semi-annual fairs and granting certain privileges to those who attended them. In the year 1762, it was enlarged by the laying off of numerous lots on the higher ground, belonging to Dade, West and the Alexanders, after which it improved rapidly, so that at the close of the Eighteenth or beginning of the Nineteenth Century its population was ten thousand, and its commerce greater than it now is. So promising was it at the close of the war, that its claims were weighed in the balance with those of Washington as the seat of National Government. It is thought that, but for the unwillingness of Washington to seem partial to Virginia, Alexandria would have been the chosen spot, and that on the first range of hills overlooking the town the public buildings would have been erected. Whether there had been any public worship or church at Alexandria previous to this enlargement of it, and the great impulse thus given to it, does not appear from the vestry-book, though it is believed that there was. But soon after this, in the year 1764, Fairfax parish is established, and measures taken for the promotion of the Church in this place. The vestry