FAITH AND FORTUNE.

A ROMANCE OF CENTRAL AMERICA.

ALMOST all ancient nations have their hero, whose adventures and achievements having, in the course of time, become mingled with romance, make up an ideal of character a little beyond humanity, yet not without its uses in establishing a high national standard, and awakening in leads to emulation. Gods and demigods were made thus in ancient Greece; and less romantic England has her Arthur; France her Charlemagne; and other nations their traditionary great men, sometimes imbued with supernatural powers, always with wonderful ones, and with qualities the very invention of which affords some idea of the people in whose minds they originate. The early inhabitants of Central America-a race scarcely traceable among the present population of that now unhappy region—are no exception to the fact of a heroic remembrance. They, too, had their highsouled, indomitable Arthur-their ideal of all noble and chivalrous qualities—in a young prince of Tezcuco, who lived in the fifteenth century; modern time compared with the pyramids, but quite a respectable antiquity for the western world.

ardent minds an enthusiasm which