THE CHARACTER OF COLUMBUS.

COLUMBUS was a man of great inventive genius. The operations of his mind were energetic, but irregular, bursting forth at times with that irresistible force which characterizes intellect of such an order. His ambition was lofty and noble, inspiring him with high thoughts and an anxiety to distinguish himself by great achievements. He aimed at dignity and wealth in the same elevated spirit with which he sought renown. They were to arise from the territories he should discover, and be commensurate in importance. His conduct was characterized by the grandeur of his views and the magnanimity of his spirit.

Instead of ravaging the newly-found countries, like so many of his contemporary discoverers who were intent only on immediate gain, he regarded them with the eye of a legislator. He sought to colonize and cultivate them, to civilize the natives, to build cities, introduce the useful arts, subject everything to the control of law, order, and religion, and thus to found regular and prosperous empires. That he failed in this was the fault of the dissolute rabble which it was his fortune to command, with whom all law was tyranny and all order oppression.

He was naturally irascible and impetuous, yet the quickness of his temper was counteracted by the generosity and benevolence of his heart. The magnanimity of his nature shone forth through all the troubles of his stormy career. Though continually outraged in his dignity, braved in his authority, foiled in his plans, and endangered in his person by the seditions of turbulent and worthless men, and that, too, at times when suffering under anguish of body and anxiety of mind enough to exasperate the most patient, yet he restrained his valiant and indignant spirit, and brought himself to forbear and reason, and even supplicate. Nor can the reader of the story of his eventful life fail to notice how free he was from all feeling of revenge; how ready to forgive and to forget on the least sign of repentance and atonement. He has been exalted for his skill in controlling others, but far greater praise is due to him for the firmness he displayed in governing himself.

His piety was genuine and fervent. Religion mingled with

the whole course of his thoughts and actions, and shone forth in his most private and unstudied writings. Whenever he made any great discovery, he devoutly returned thanks to God. The voice of prayer and the melody of praise rose from his ships on discovering the New World, and his first action on landing was to prostrate himself upon the earth and offer up thanksgivings. All his great enterprises were undertaken in the name of the Holy Trinity, and he partook of the Holy Sacrament before embarkation. He observed the festivals of the Church in the wildest situations. The Sabbath was to him a day of sacred rest, on which he would never sail from a port unless in case of extreme necessity. The religion thus deeply seated in his soul diffused a sober dignity and a benign composure over his whole deportment. His very language was pure and guarded, and free from all gross and irreverent expressions.

He was decidedly a visionary, but a visionary of an uncommon kind, and successful in his dreams. The manner in which his ardent imagination and mercurial nature were controlled by a powerful judgment and directed by an acute sagacity is the most extraordinary feature in his character. Thus governed, his imagination, instead of exhausting itself in idle flights, lent aid to his judgment and enabled him to form conclusions at which common minds never could have arrived; nay, which they could not conceive when pointed out. To his intellectual vision it was given to read the signs of the times, and to trace in the conjectures and reveries of past ages the indications of a new world. "His soul," observes a Spanish writer, superior to the age in which he lived. For him was reserved the great enterprise of traversing a sea which had given rise to so many fables, and of deciphering the mystery of his age."

was

With all the visionary fervor of his imagination, its fondest dreams fell short of the reality. He died in ignorance of the real grandeur of his discovery. Until his last breath he entertained the idea that he had merely opened a new way to the old resorts of opulent commerce, and had discovered some of the wild regions of the East.

What visions of glory would have broken upon his mind, could he have known that he had indeed discovered a new continent, equal to the Old World in magnitude, and separated by two vast

oceans from all the earth hitherto known by civilized man! How would his magnanimous spirit have been consoled amidst the afflictions of age and the cares of penury, the neglect of a fickle public and the injustice of an ungrateful king, could he have anticipated the splendid empires which would rise in the beautiful world he had discovered, and the nations and tongues and languages which were to fill the lands with his renown, and to revere and bless his name to the latest posterity!

WASHINGTON IRVING.

THE VISION OF COLUMBUS.*

(Soliloquy of Columbus in prison. Written in 1807.)

LAND of delights, ah, dear, delusive coast,
To these fond, aged eyes forever lost,
No more thy flowery vales I travel o'er,
For me thy mountains rear the head no more,
For me thy sparkling rocks no gems unfold,
Nor streams luxuriant wear their paths in gold:
From realms of promised peace forever borne,
I hail mute anguish, and in secret mourn.

But dangers past, a world explored in vain,
And foes triumphant, show but half my pain.

Dissembling friends, each early joy who gave,
And fired my youth the storms of fate to brave,
Swarmed in the sunshine of my happier days,
Pursued the fortune and forsook the praise,
Now pass my cell with smiles of sour disdain,
Insult my woes, and triumph in my pain.

One gentle guardian once could shield the brave;
But now that guardian slumbers in the grave.
Hear from above, thou dear departed shade,
As once my hopes, my present sorrows aid;

*From "The Columbiad."

Burst, my full heart,-afford that last relief,-
Breathe back my sighs, and reinspire my grief.
Still in my sight thy royal form appears,
Reproves my silence, and demands my tears.
Even on that hour no more I joy to dwell,
When thy protection bade the canvas swell,
When kings and churchmen found their factions vain,
Blind Superstition shrunk beneath her chain,
The sun's glad beam led on the circling way,
And isles rose beauteous in Atlantic day;
For on those silver shores, that new domain,
What crowds of tyrants fix their murderous reign!
Her infant realm, indignant Freedom flies,
Truth leaves the world, and Isabella dies.

(Hesper, visiting Spirit, addresses Columbus, and bears him upward where the outspread earth gladdens his eyes and the future of the New World is unfolded to his mental vision.)

Rise, trembling chief, to scenes of rapture rise,
This voice awaits thee from the western skies:
Indulge no longer that desponding strain,
Nor count thy toils nor deem thy labor vain.
Thou seest in me the guardian power who keeps
The new-found world that skirts Atlantic deeps,
Hesper my name,-my seat the brightest throne
In Night's whole heaven,-my sire the living sun.
This hand which formed and in the tides of time
Laves and improves the 'meliorating clime,
Which taught thy prow to cleave the trackless way,
And hailed thee first in occidental day,

To all thy worth shall vindicate thy claim,

And raise up nations to revere thy name.

In this dark age the blinded faction sways,
And wealth and conquest gain the palm of praise;
Awed into slaves, while grovelling millions groan,
And blood-stained steps lead upward to a throne.
Far other wreaths thy virtuous temples twine,
Far nobler triumphs crown a life like thine.

.

Thine be the joys that minds immortal grace,
As thine the deeds that bless a kindred race.

Now raise thy sorrowed soul to views more bright,
The visioned ages rushing on thy sight.

Worlds beyond worlds shall bring to light their stores;
Time, Nature, Science, blend their utmost powers,

To show, concentred in one blaze of fame,

The ungathered glories that await thy name.

Long gazed the mariner, when thus the guide: "Here spreads the world thy daring sail descried, Hesperia' called, from my anterior claim,

But now Columbia, from thy patriarch name.
Ages unborn shall bless the happier day

That saw thy streamer shape the guideless way,
Their bravest heroes trace the path you lead,
And sires of nations through the regions spread.
A-north from that broad gulf where verdant rise
Those gentler mounds that skirt the temperate skies,
A happier hemisphere invites thy view.

'Tis there the Old World shall embrace the New,
Where Europe's better sons their seat shall trace,
And change of government improve the race.
Through all the mid-sky zones, to yon blue pole,
Their green hills lengthen, their bright rivers roll,
And sloping westward, how their champaigns run,
How slope their uplands to the morning sun.

There lies the path thy future sons shall trace,
Plant here their arts and rear their vigorous race,—
A race predestined in these choice abodes.
To teach mankind to tame their fluvial floods;
Retain from ocean, as their work requires,
Those great auxiliars raised by solar fires;

Force them to form ten thousand roads, and girth
With liquid belts each verdant mound of earth;
To aid the colon's as the carrier's toil,
To drive the coulter and to fat the soil;
Learn all mechanic arts, and oft regain
Their native hills, in vapor and in rain.