and although he had no conception of what he
had discovered, it was the most important event in the history of the
fifteenth century. There was nothing left for him to do to increase his
renown. A coat-of-arms had been assigned him, and he rode on horseback
through the streets of Barcelona, with the King on one side of him and
Prince Juan on the other. His enormous claims for honors and emoluments
had been granted. His first letter of February, 1493, printed in several
languages, had been read in the courts of Europe with wonder and
amazement. "What delicious food for an ingenious mind!" wrote Peter
Martyr. In England, it was termed "a thing more divine than human." No
other man ever rose to such a pinnacle of fame so suddenly; and no other
man from such a height ever dropped out of sight so quickly. His three
later voyages were miserable failures; a pitiful record of misfortunes,
blunders, cruelties, moral delinquencies, quarrels, and impotent
complainings. They added nothing to the fund of human knowledge, or to
his own. On the fourth voyage he was groping about to find the River
Ganges, the great Khan of China, and the earthly paradise. His two
subsequent years of disappointment and sickness and poverty were
wretchedness personified. Other and more competent men took up the work
of discovery, and in thirteen years after the finding of a western route
to India had been announced, the name and personality of Columbus had
almost passed from the memory of men. He died at Valladolid, May 20,
1506; and outside of a small circle of relatives, his body was committed
to the earth with as little notice and ceremony as that of an unknown
beggar on its way to the potter's field. Yet the Spanish court was in
the town at the time. Peter Martyr was there, writing long letters of
news and gossip; and in five that are still extant there is no mention
of the sickness and death of Columbus. Four weeks later an official
document had the brief mention that "the Admiral is dead." Two Italian
authors, making, one and two years later, some corrections pertaining
to his early voyages, had not heard of his death.

NEW STAMPS FOR WORLD'S FAIR YEAR.

From the New York _Commercial Advertiser_.

Third Assistant Postmaster-General Hazen is preparing the designs for a
set of "Jubilee" stamps, to be issued by the Postoffice Department in
honor of the quadri-centennial. That is, he is getting together material
which will suggest to him the