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Few men are better known throughout Mexico today than Alfredo Chavero. As a lawyer, a politician, a man of affairs and a writer, he has been eminently successful. He was born in the City of Mexico, February 1, 1841. He studied law, and began the practice of the profession at the age of twenty years. In 1862 he was elected Deputy to Congress. A Liberal in politics, he was associated with Juarez throughout the period of the French intervention. After the downfall of the Empire in 1867, he entered journalism and began his career in letters. During the administration of Lerdo de Tejada he was in Europe, but when that government fell, he returned to Mexico and was appointed to the second position in the department of foreign affairs. He has occupied other important government positions, among them that of City Treasurer and Governor of the Federal District and has for many years been a member of the House of Deputies, of which he has at times been the presiding officer.

Señor Chavero is, probably, the foremost living Mexican authority upon the antiquities of that country. He is also an eminent historian. In both archæology and history he has written important works. At the quadricentennial celebration of the discovery of America, he was the chief member of a commission, which among other things published a great work—Antigüedades Mexicanas—which was largely devoted to facsimile reproduction of ancient Mexican picture manuscripts, before unpublished; the accompanying explanatory text was written by Chavero himself. Among other archæological works he has written Los dioses astronomicos de los antiguos Mexicanos (the Astronomical Gods of the Ancient Mexicans)—and studies upon the stone of the sun, and the stone of hunger. He has lately published the Wheel of Years, and Hieroglyphic Paintings. He was the author of the first volume of the great work México á traves de los Siglos, (Mexico, Through the Centuries), a history of Mexico in five large quarto volumes. Each of these volumes dealt with a distinct epoch of Mexican history and was written by a specialist. Chavero’s volume treated Prehistoric Mexico in a masterly fashion. In biography Chavero’s lives of Sahagun, Siguenza, and Boturini deal with Spanish-Mexicans, his Itzcoatl and Montezuma with natives. He has edited, with scholarly annotation, the works of Ixtlilxochitl and Muñoz Camargo’s Historia de Tlaxcala.

But Alfredo Chavero has also written in the field of dramatic literature, some of his plays having been well received. Xochitl, Quetzalcoatl and Los Amores de Alarcon (The Loves of Alarcon) are among the best known. In Xochitl and Quetzalcoatl, the romantic events of the days of the Conquest and the life of the Indians, furnish his material. In all his writing, Chavero is simple, direct, and strong; his style is graceful and his treatment interesting.

Our quotations are drawn from México á traves de los Siglos and Xochitl.