LIKE HOMER—A BEGGAR IN THE GATE.
Diego Clemencin, a Spanish statesman and author of merit. Born at Murcia, 1765; died, 1834. From his "Elogio de la Reina Catolica, Isabella de Castilla" (1851).
A man obscure, and but little known, followed at this time the court. Confounded in the crowd of unfortunate applicants, feeding his imagination in the corners of antechambers with the pompous project of discovering a world, melancholy and dejected in the midst of the general rejoicing, he beheld with indifference, and almost with contempt, the conclusion of a conquest which swelled all bosoms with jubilee, and seemed to have reached the utmost bounds of desire. That man was Christopher Columbus.