The same doubt attends the various portraits that pretend to represent his features. The most reliable authorities--and the subject has been under discussion for two centuries--agree that there is no tangible evidence to prove that the face of Columbus was ever painted or sketched or graven, during his life. His portrait has been painted, like that of the Madonna and those of the saints, by many famous artists, each dependent upon verbal descriptions of his appearance by contemporaneous writers, and each conveying to the canvas his own conception of what the great seaman's face must have been; but it may not be said that any of the portraits are genuine, and it is believed that all of them are more or less fanciful. It must be considered that the art of painting portraits was in its infancy when Columbus lived. The honor was reserved for kings and queens and other dignitaries, and Columbus was regarded as an importunate adventurer, who at the close of his first voyage enjoyed a brief triumph, but from the termination of his second voyage was the victim of envy and misrepresentation to the close of his life. He was derided and condemned, was brought in chains like a common felon from the continent he had discovered, and for nearly two hundred years his descendants contested in the courts for the dignities and emoluments he demanded of the crown of Spain before undertaking what was then the most perilous and uncertain of adventures. Even the glory of giving his name to the lands he discovered was transferred to another--a man who followed in his track; and it is not strange, under such circumstances, that the artists of Spain did not leave the religious subjects upon which they were engaged to paint the portrait of one who said of himself that he was a beggar "without a penny to buy food." THE STANDARD OF MODERN CRITICISM. The Hon. WILLIAM ELEROY CURTIS, in an able article in the _Chautauquan Magazine_, September, 1892. Whether the meager results of recent investigation are more reliable than the testimony of earlier pens is a serious question, and the sympathetic and generous reader will challenge the right of modern historians to destroy and reject traditions to which centuries have paid reverence. The failure to supply evidence in place of that which has been discarded is of itself sufficient to impair faith in the modern creation, and simply demonstrates the fallacy of the theory that what can not be proven did not exist. If the same analysis to which the career of Columbus has been subjected should be applied to every character in sacred and secular history, there would be little left among the world's great heroes to admire. So we ask permission to retain the old ideal, and remember the discoverer of our hemisphere as a man of human weaknesses but of stern purpose, inflexible will, undaunted courage, patience, and professional theories most of which modern science has demonstrated to be true.