We need not be in the least disturbed by the learned men who periodically demonstrate that Leif Ericson, as they familiarly call him, was the true discoverer of our country. We need never change “Hail Columbia” into “Hail Ericsonia,” and there is not the least danger Columbia College will ever be known as Leifia University. We can cheerfully admit that Leif Ericson--or, to give him what was probably his full name, Eliphalet B. Ericson--and his Norwegians landed somewhere in New England, and we can even forgive the prompt way in which they forgot all about it, by assuming that they landed on Sunday or on a fast-day, and were so disheartened that they never wanted to hear the subject spoken of again. We can grant all this, and still cherish the memory of Columbus as the true and only successful discoverer of America. Most biographers have written of Columbus in much the same way that a modern campaign biographer writes the life of the Presidential candidate from whom he hopes to receives an office. They forget that he was never nominated by any regular party convention, and that it is therefore wrong to assume, without any sufficient evidence, that he was the greatest and best man that ever lived. He was undoubtedly a bold sailor, but he lived in an age when bold sailors were produced in quantities commensurate with the demands of exploration, and we cannot say that he was any bolder or better sailor than the Cabots or his own brother Bartholomew. He was certainly no braver soldier than Ojeda, and his conquests were trifling in comparison with those of Cortez and Pizarro. As a civil ruler he was a conspicuous failure. It is true that the colonists over whom he was placed were, many of them, turbulent scoundrels; but the unanimity with which they condemned his administration, and the uniformity with which every commissioner appointed to investigate his conduct as a ruler condemned him, compel us to believe that he was not an able governor either of Spanish colonists or contiguous Indians. He was not habitually cruel, as was Pizarro, but he insisted upon enslaving the Indians for his own profit, though Queen Isabella had forbidden him to enslave them or to treat them harshly. He could be magnanimous at times, but he would not undertake a voyage of discovery except upon terms which would ensure him money and rank, and he did not hesitate to claim for himself the reward which was offered, during his first voyage, to the man who should first see the land, and which was fairly earned by one of his sailors.