Mexico Unvisited Mexican Architecture of the Vice-Regal Period. By Walter
H. Kilham. (Longmans. 218.) It is one of the most fallacious of all the platitudes to say that the speed and ease of motor transport has made the world a small place. On the contrary it has made it immensely larger. The world of the mediaeval travellers was simply Western Europe and Asia Minor, a little patch of light surrounded by a great blackness. By mule and packhorse most places could be visited. To-day we know too much about too many peoples. • There is no trivial tribe of savages in the Marquesas or in Malay on which the British Museum could not supply its tomes and its monographs. A bright even light shines everywhere ; there is neither mystery nor magic left.
But perhaps it is this very fact which lends a wistful drain to the consideration of lands and nations of which we know little and scarcely hope to visit. At any rate Mr. Killiam's new book is full of charm and interest. More than half of it consists in an admirable array of photographs, tempting one to dream gently as one turns through these pages of sun soaked patios, exotic domes and deep-shadowed cathedrals.
Mr. Kilham reads the history of Mexico in her stones and traces the grand volcanic, cruel energy of conquering Spain in the early buildings, half churches, half fortresses, which were built by the immediate followers of Cortez. The whole story of the three great centuries of the Viceregal period, when Mexico was perhaps the greatest and richest colony in the world, may be seen in the buildings here illustrated.
And the author's style is even better than his pictures. Ile is an enthusiast and he infects vs with his zeal. Now intriguing to a reader "long in cities pent" is this description of the general tenor of Mexican life :— " The gentle traffic of patient donkeys and sandat-footed Indian flows noiselessly along the cobbled country roads and down the cool colonnades of the cities. Above the time-stained garden walls rise straight, dark cypresses and rustling eucalyptus. The domes and towers of the village church, . massive and eternal, look down into courts gay with roses and bougainvillea, watered by plashing fountains and soothed by the gurgle of covered streams* Across the maize. comes the soft chime of distant vespers. "Pink and orange walls, grated windows, palms and cactio., ixones nnd pulque, snowy volcanoes against an ultramarine sky.'
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