him scarcely greater weight than the sayings of the ancients, or than current interpretations of holy writ. Nothing more plainly proves the power that sent him forth than the fact that in scarcely one of his original conceptions was he correct. He thought to reach Asia over an unobstructed ocean sea by sailing west; he did not. To the day of his death he thought America was Asia, and that Cuba was mainland; that the earth was much smaller than it is, and that six sevenths of it was land. He dwelt much on a society of Amazons who never had existence, and at every step among the Islands he ingenuously allowed his inflamed imagination to deceive him. He claimed to have been divinely appointed for this mission; he affirmed his voyage a miracle, and himself inspired with the conception of it by the most holy Trinity; he vowed to rescue the holy sepulchre, which he never did; he proclaimed visions which he never saw, such as St Elmo at the top-mast with seven lighted tapers, and told of voices which he never heard; he pictured himself a missionary to benighted heathen, when in truth he was scattering among them legions of fiery devils. But what he knew and did, assuredly, was enough, opening the ocean to highways, and finding new continents; enough to fully entitle him to all the glory man can give to man; and as for his errors of judgment, had he been able to map America as accurately as can we to-day, had he been divine instead of, as he claimed, only divinely appointed, with myriads of attendant ministers, his achievement would have been none the greater. From the infirmities of his nature sprang the nobility of Brutus; from the weaknesses of Columbus was compounded his strength. Assuredly it was no part of the experience and ingenuity which springs from life-long application that made Columbus so essentially a visionary; nor was it his scientific attainments, nor the splendid successes which despite the so frequent frowns of fortune we must accredit him. In his avocation of mariner he was a plain, thoughtful man of sound judgment and wise discretion; but fired by enthusiasm he became more than an ordinary navigator; he became more as he fancied himself, superhuman, the very arm of omnipotence. Once born in him the infatuation that he was the divinely appointed instrument for the accomplishment of this work, and frowning monarchs or perilous seas were as straws in his way. We see clearly enough what moved him, these four hundred years after the event, though he who was moved in reality knew little about it. By the pressure of rapidly accumulating ideas we see brought to the front in discovery Christopher Columbus, just as in the reformation of the church Martin Luther is crowded to the front. The German monk was not the Reformation; like the Genoese sailor, he was but an instrument in the hands of a power palpable to all, but called by different persons different names.