The voyage of Columbus was a protest against the ignorance of the mediaeval age. The discovery of the New World was the first sign of the real renaissance of the Old World. It created new heavens and a new earth, broadened immeasurably the horizon of men and nations, and transformed the whole order of European thought. Columbus was the greatest educator who ever lived, for he emancipated mankind from the narrowness of its own ignorance, and taught the great lesson that human destiny, like divine mercy, arches over the whole world. If a perspective of four centuries of progress could have floated like a mirage before the eyes of the great discoverer as he was sighting San Salvador, the American school-house would have loomed up as the greatest institution of the New World's future. Behind him he had left mediaeval ignorance, encumbered with superstition, and paralyzed by an ecclesiastical pedantry which passed for learning. Before him lay a new world with the promise of the potency of civil and religious liberty, free education, and popular enlightenment. Because the school-house, like his own voyage, has been a protest against popular ignorance, and has done more than anything else to make our free America what it is, it would have towered above everything else in the mirage-like vision of the world's progress. THE EARTH'S ROTUNDITY. The Rev. Father NUGENT of Iowa. From an address printed in the Denver _Republican_, 1892. The theory of the rotundity of the earth was not born with Columbus. It had been announced centuries before Christ, but the law of gravitation had not been discovered and the world found it impossible to think of another hemisphere in which trees would grow downward into the air and men walk with their heads suspended from their feet. The theologians and scholars who scoffed at Columbus' theory had better grounds for opposing him, according to the received knowledge of the time, than he for upholding his ideal. They were scientifically wrong and he was unscientifically correct. HANDS ACROSS THE SEA. The President responds to a message from the Alcalde of Palos. The following cable messages were exchanged this day: LA RABIDA, August 3d. The President: To-day, 400 years ago, Columbus sailed from Palos, discovering America. The United States flag is being hoisted this moment in front of the Convent La Rabida, along with banners of all the American States. Batteries and ships saluting, accompanied by enthusiastic acclamations of the people, army, and navy. God bless America. PRIETO, _Alcalde of Palos_.