most persistent man of enterprise that I have
read of in history. Critics ambitious to say something new may rake out
slanders from the archives of enemies, and discover faults which
derogate from the character we have been taught to admire and venerate;
they may even point out spots, which we cannot disprove, in that sun of
glorious brightness, which shed its beneficent rays over a century of
darkness,--but this we know, that, whatever may be the force of
detraction, his fame has been steadily increasing, even on the admission
of his slanderers, for three centuries, and that he now shines as a
fixed star in the constellation of the great lights of modern times, not
alone because he succeeded in crossing the ocean, when once embarked on
it, but for surmounting the moral difficulties which lay in his way
before he could embark upon it, and for being finally instrumental in
conferring the greatest boon that our world has received from any mortal
man, since Noah entered into the ark.

I think it is Lamartine who has said that truly immortal benefactors
have seldom been able to accomplish their mission without the
encouragement of either saints or women. This is emphatically true in
the case of Columbus. The door to success was at last opened to him by a
friendly and sympathetic friar of a Franciscan convent near the little
port of Palos, in Andalusia. The sun-burned and disappointed adventurer
(for that is what he was), wearied and hungry, and nearly discouraged,
stopped at the convent-door to get a morsel of bread for his famished
son, who attended him in his pilgrimage. The prior of that obscure
convent was the first who comprehended the man of genius, not so much
because he was an enlightened scholar, but because his pious soul was
full of kindly sympathy, showing that the instincts of love are kindred
to the inspirations of genius. It was the voice of Ali and Cadijeh that
strengthened Mohammed. It was Catherine von Bora who sustained Luther in
his gigantic task. The worthy friar, struck by the noble bearing of a
man so poor and wearied, became delighted with the conversation of his
guest, who opened to him both his heart and his schemes. He forwarded
his plans by a letter to a powerful ecclesiastic, who introduced him to
the Spanish Court, then one of the most powerful, and certainly the
proudest and most punctilious, in Europe. Ferdinand of Aragon was
polite, yet wary and incredulous; but Isabella of Castile listened