William Russell, American author and educationist. Born in Scotland, 1798; died, 1873. From his "Modern History."
Transcendent genius and superlative courage experience almost equal difficulty in carrying their designs into execution when they depend on the assistance of others. Columbus possessed both—he exerted both; and the concurrence of other heads and other hearts was necessary to give success to either; he had indolence and cowardice to encounter, as well as ignorance and prejudice. He had formerly been ridiculed as a visionary, he was now pitied as a desperado. The Portuguese navigators, in accomplishing their first discoveries, had always some reference to the coast; cape had pointed them to cape; but Columbus, with no landmark but the heavens, nor any guide but the compass, boldly launched into the ocean, without knowing what shore should receive him or where he could find rest for the sole of his foot.
STATUARY AT SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA.
One of the principal features in the State capitol at Sacramento is a beautiful and artistic group of statuary, cut from a solid block of purest white marble. It represents Columbus pleading the cause of his project before Queen Isabella of Spain. The Spanish sovereign is seated; at her left hand kneels the First Admiral, while an attendant page on the right watches with wonder the nobly generous action of the Queen. Columbus, 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 rediscovered 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 Timœus 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, in a word, Columbus proved by his discovery the existence of the land which Madoc had visited before him, as Hakluyt and Powell pretended; and ascertained for a certainty that which for the ancients had always been so uncertain, problematical, and mysterious—his glory becomes only the more splendid, and more an object to command admiration.