had taken full effect upon his mind, they prevailed to the exclusion of all inferior purposes. "He never spoke in doubt or hesitation, but with as much certainty as if his eyes had beheld the promised land." His hopes were not the result of excited fancy, nor of that dreamy enthusiasm which peoples the air and fills all space with fairy beings, but were founded upon the intense labour of a powerful and philosophic intellect. He firmly believed that by sailing continuously westward from Europe, the adventurers must finally attain either to the extreme eastern projections of Asia, or to the shores of a fourth and hitherto unknown continent."

He based this belief upon three grounds :-First, upon the nature of things: for the spherical form of the earth was now generally received; and though the laws of specific and of general gravity were but the conjectures of the learned few, yet a mind trained to habits of thought easily adopted the belief that some counterbalancing weight of land had been placed by the all-wise Architect in opposition to the immense continents known to antiquity. Secondly, upon the authority of learned

a Irving's Columbus, i. 25.

b Delaplaine's Repos. Disting. Amer., i. 6. In the brief but wellwritten life of Columbus here found, it is stated that he rejected the idea generally received that India extended greatly to the east, and believed the existence of a fourth continent washed by the waters of

the Atlantic Ocean;" but it seems most probable that the great voyager had not yet shaken off the fetters of the age in which he lived. Compare with Irving's Columbus, i. 25, Belknap's Am. Biog., i. 161–164, Robertson's Amer., i. 44.

c Malte Brun's Univ. Geog., t. xiv., cited in Irving's Columbus, i. 25.

1492.]

TRUE BASIS OF HIS GLORY.

27

writers. Marco Polo had travelled into Asia; and, half a century after, Sir John Mandeville had followed; and both, in returning, had published accounts of their discoveries, in which, with much of truth, they had combined more of extravagant fiction. From these and others Columbus gathered nutriment for his faith in a western passage to the Indies. Thirdly, upon the reports of navigators. Some, who had stretched farthest into the expanse west of Europe, had encountered timber artificially carved, and canes of enormous size floating upon the sea; even a canoe had been driven to them by easterly winds; and at one time the bodies of two men resembling neither the inhabitants of Europe nor of Africa were cast upon the coasts of the Azore Islands."

But it is evident that the first of these grounds produced on the mind of Columbus the deepest impression, and that the others were only resorted to as confirming his favourite theory. His genius had already imparted to the land of the West all the freshness of reality; and at a time when the vulgar mass would have listened with doubt-perhaps with horror-to his proposal, and when even the enlightened were confining their views to the East and the shores of Africa, he was willing to launch his bark upon the Atlantic, and to steer westward until either his cherished hopes were

a Robertson's America, i. 31, 32. Irving's Columbus, ii. Appen. 298304. Marco Polo travelled in 1265, and Mandeville in 1322.

b Delaplaine's Repos. Dist. Am., i. 6; Robertson's Am., i. 44; Belknap's Am. Biog., i. 165.

realized, or his body had found a tomb in the bosom of that ocean to which he had entrusted his fortunes. It is in this aspect that Columbus appears among the greatest of the great. He was not misled by enthusiasm, or driven on by accident: he was not the fortunate victim of winds and waves, whose fury he would willingly have avoided. His judgment was mature; his conduct was deliberate; he had estimated the hazard, and was ready to meet it. He was willing to encounter the scorn of the ignorant, the perfidy of the interested, the doubts of the learned, the delays of royalty,—all these he welcomed if they might conduct him to the threshold of an enterprise of danger beyond all that had gone before,―of inevitable ruin should he fail-but of unfading glory should success place a crown upon his brow.

This

He who would speak coldly of Columbus, and who, without thought, would ascribe to another the merit which is claimed for him alone, would do well to reflect upon the facts attending his discovery. It is not merely because he crossed the Atlantic, and landed upon one of the Bahama Islands, that we would receive him as our benefactor. might, by singular and fortunate accident, have been accomplished by one before his day, who would have merited little at the hands of posterity. But it is the profound, the reflecting, the firm, yet chastened and trusting spirit, that deserves our admiration-the mind that conceived, formed, executed the plan of his life.

Excited by hope, yet laden with care, he turned

1492.]

ISABELLA.

29

his ships to the setting of the sun, and perhaps might have gathered from the departing light presages of darkness for his own high aspirations. He passed three thousand miles of water that had never before been disturbed by a keel; he knew not, with certainty, whither he tended; the very winds which blew with gentle force and wafted on the adventurers over a placid sea, seemed invested with a mysterious control; their breath might be the treacherous fanning of a power from which they could never escape, and which was finally to bear them to certain destruction.* The superstitious minds over which the master soul presided threatened constant rebellion, and added to the solemn terrors of nature the fierce impulses of human pas

sions.

But the difficulties have been encountered and overcome, the dangers have fled before courage and genius; and the day on which Columbus cast himself upon his knees on the beach of San Salvador, and then rising drew his sword and displayed the royal ensign of the Castilian monarchs," has imparted to his name a lustre which will brighten with its rays the history of all succeeding genera

tions.

If any thing could add to the interest of a discovery so wonderful, achieved by a character so magnanimous, it might be found in the thought, that for this great success, Columbus, and all who have lived after him, are wholly indebted to the gene

b Irving's Columbus, i. 103; Delaplaine's Repos. Dist. Am., i. 10.

rous energy of a woman; and if that part of our country upon whose history we are about to enter bears a name given by a queen, and endeared by many associations of feminine grace, America herself will never forget the ties which bind her to the fame of the noble, the virtuous, the self-sacrificing Isabella of Castile."

After the return of the great Genoese from his first voyage across the Atlantic, all astonishment at subsequent discoveries must be greatly diminished, if not entirely removed. There were indeed stormy seas, bleak and frozen coasts, treacherous rocks and quicksands yet to be encountered, but the mysteries of the ocean had been revealed-the veil was removed-and future voyagers might securely open their sails to the breeze which bore them to the western continent.

To Spain undoubtedly belongs the honour of having equipped and sent forth the hero who was destined to give to religion and civilization a new world for their favoured home; but another country must claim the merit of having planted in America the germ of that greatness which she derives from her prosperity and her free institutions. Had Bartholomew Columbus reached the court of Henry the Seventh of England in due season, even the avaricious caution of that monarch might have

Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, ii. 128. Irving's Columbus, i. 71. "The king looked coldly on the affair, and the royal finances were absolutely drained by the war.

***

With an enthusiasm worthy

of herself and of the cause, Isabella exclaimed - I undertake the enterprise for my own crown of Castile, and will pledge my private jewels to raise the necessary funds.' "