olumbus, with a globe in his hand, contends that the world is round,
and pleads for assistance to fit out an expedition to discover the New
World. The royal reply is, "I will assume the undertaking for my own
crown of Castille, and am ready to pledge my jewels to defray its
expense, if the funds in the treasury shall be found inadequate," The
group, which is said to be a masterpiece of work, the only piece of its
kind in the United States, was executed in Florence, Italy, by Larkin G.
Mead of Vermont, an American artist of known reputation. Costing
$60,000, it was presented to the State of California, in 1883, by Mr. D.
O. Mills.

A MONUMENT NEAR SALAMANCA.

At Valcuebo, a country farm once belonging to the Dominicans of
Salamanca, Columbus was entertained by Diego de Deza--prior of the great
Dominican convent of San Esteban and professor of theology at
Salamanca--while the Junta [committee] of Spanish ecclesiastics
considered his prospects. His residence there was a peaceful oasis in
the stormy life of the great discoverer. The little grange still stands
at a distance of about three miles west of Salamanca, and the country
people have a tradition that on the crest of a small hill near the
house, now called "Teso de Colon" (i. e., Columbus' Peak), the future
discoverer used to pass long hours conferring with his visitors or
reading in solitude. The present owner, Don Martin de Solis, has erected
a monument on this hill, consisting of a stone pyramid surmounted by a
globe; it commemorates the spot where the storm-tossed hero enjoyed a
brief interval of peace and rest.

HONOR TO WHOM HONOR IS DUE.

MANOEL FRANCISCO DE BARROS Y SOUZA, VISCOUNT SANTAREM, a noted
Portuguese diplomatist and writer. Born at Lisbon, 1790; died,
1856.

If Columbus was not the first to discover America, he was, at least, the
man who _re_discovered it, and in a positive and definite shape
communicated the knowledge of it. For, if he verified what the Egyptian
priest indicated to Solon, the Athenian, as is related by Plato in the
Timoeus respecting the Island of Atlantis; if he realized the
hypothesis of Actian; if he accomplished the prophecy of Seneca in the
Medea; if he demonstrated that the story of the mysterious Carthaginian
vessel, related by Aristotle and Theophrastus, was not a dream; if he
established by deeds that there was nothing visionary in what St.
Gregory pointed at in one of his letters to St. Clement; if,