With what exquisite grace, with what tender solicitude and motherly blindness to faults Mr Irving defends the reputation of Columbus! Is the Genoese a pirate, then is piracy "almost legalized;" is he a slave-maker, "the customs of the times" are pleaded; without censure he lives at Córdova in open adultery with Beatriz Enriquez, and there becomes the father of the illegitimate Fernando; a bungling attempt is made to excuse the hero for depriving the poor sailor of the prize offered him who should first see land; Oviedo is charged with falsehood because he sometimes decides against the discoverer in issues of policy and character; Father Buil was "as turbulent as he was crafty" because he disagreed with the admiral in some of his measures; the most extravagant vituperation is hurled at Aguado because he is chosen to examine and report on the affairs of the Indies; Fonseca is denounced as inexpressibly vile because he thwarts some of the discoverer's hare-brained projects; and so with regard to those who in any wise opposed him, while all who smiled on him were angels of light. All through his later life when extravagant requests were met by more than the usual liberality of royalty, Irving is petulantly complaining because more is not done for his hero, and because his petulant hero complains. And this puerile pride from which springs such petulance the eloquent biographer coins into the noble ambition of conscious merit. Though according to his own statement the madness of the man increased until toward the latter end he was little better than imbecile, yet we are at the same time gravely assured that "his temper was naturally irritable, but he subdued it by the magnanimity of his spirit." The son Fernando denies that his father once carded wool; Irving does not attempt to excuse this blemish because his readers do not regard work ignoble. Now it is not the toning-down of defects in a good man's character that I object to so much as the predetermined exaltation of one historical personage at the expense of others utterly debased under like premeditation. Did Mr Irving, and the several scores of biographers preceding and following him, parade the good qualities of Bobadilla, Roldan, and Ovando as heartily as those of their hero, the world would be puzzled what to make of it. We are not accustomed to such statements. Unseasoned biography is tasteless, and we are taught not to expect truth, but a model. We should not know what these writers were trying to do if they catalogued the misdemeanors of Columbus and his brothers with the same embellishments applied to Aguado, Buil, and Fonseca; telling with pathetic exaggeration how the benign admiral of the ocean sea was the first to employ bloodhounds against the naked natives; how he practised varied cruelties in Española beyond expression barbarous; and how he stooped upon occasion not only to vulgar trickery, but to base treachery.