ns, having a
ringing for ever in his ears of great projects, making him deaf to much,
perhaps, that prudence might have heeded:--one to be loved by those near
him, and likely by his presence to inspire favour and respect.

COLUMBUS'S DESIRE FOR DISCOVERY.

At what precise period his great idea came into his mind we have no means
of ascertaining. The continuous current of Portuguese discoveries had, as
we have seen, excited the mind of Europe, and must have greatly influenced
Columbus, living in the midst of them. This may be said without in the
least detracting from his merits as a discoverer. In real life people do
not spring from something baseless to something substantial, as people in
sick dreams. A great invention or discovery is often like a daring leap,
but it is from land to land, not from nothing to something; and if we look
at the subject with this consideration fully before us, we shall probably
admit that Columbus had as large a share in the merit of his discovery as
most inventors or discoverers can lay claim to. If the idea which has
rendered him famous was not in his mind at the outset of his career of
investigation, at any rate he had from the first a desire for discovery,
or, as he says himself, the wish to know the secrets of this world. It may
be a question whether this impulse soon brought him to his utmost height
of survey, and that he then only applied to learning to confirm his first
views; or whether the impulse merely carried him along with growing
perception of the great truth he was to prove, into deep thinking upon
cosmographical studies, Portuguese discoveries, the dreams of learned men,
the labours of former geographers, the dim prophetic notices of great
unknown lands, and vague reports amongst mariners of driftwood seen on the
seas. But at any rate we know that he arrived at a fixed conclusion that
there was a way by the west to the Indies; that he could discover this
way, and so come to Cipango, Cathay, the Grand Khan, and all he had met
with in the gorgeous descriptions of Marco Polo and other ancient
authorities. We may not pretend to lay down the exact chronological order
of the formation of the idea in his mind, in fact, to know more about it
than he would probably have been able to tell us himself. And it must not
be forgotten that his enterprise, as compared with that of the Portuguese
along the coast of Africa, was as an invention compared to an improvement.
Each new discovery