The theories of mediæval schoolmen--a monotonous record of unprogressive ideas--need not be scheduled here, the more so as we approach the period of discoveries momentous in their ultimate effect upon opinions which now possess only the value attaching to the history of discredited conceptions of the universe. Commerce, more than scientific curiosity, gave the impetus to the discovery that the earth is a globe. Trade with the East was divided between Genoa and Venice. These cities were rivals, and the Genoese, alarmed at the growing success of the Venetians, resolved to try to reach India from the west. Their schemes were justified by reports of land indications brought by seamen who had passed through the "Pillars of Hercules" to the Atlantic. The sequel is well known. Columbus, after clerical opposition, and rebuffs from other states, "offering," as Mr. Payne says, in his excellent History of America, "though he knew it not, the New World in exchange for three ships and provisions for twelve months," finally secured the support of the Spanish king, and sailed from Cadiz on the 3d of August, 1492. On 11th of October he sighted the fringes of the New World, and believing that he had sailed from Spain to India, gave the name West Indies to the island-group. America itself had been discovered by roving Norsemen five hundred years before, but the fact was buried in Icelandic tradition. Following Columbus, Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese, set sail in 1497, and taking a southerly course, doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Twenty-two years later, Ferdinand Magellan started on a voyage more famous than that of Columbus, since his ambition was to sail round the world, and thus complete the chain of proof against the theory of its flatness. For "though the Church hath evermore from Holy Writ affirmed that the earth should be a widespread plain bordered by the waters, yet he comforted himself when he considered that in the eclipses of the moon the shadow cast of the earth is round; and as is the shadow, such, in like manner, is the substance." Doubling Cape Horn through the straits that bear his name, Magellan entered the vast ocean whose calm surface caused him to call it the Pacific, and after terrible sufferings, he reached the Ladrone Islands where, either at the hands of a mutinous crew, or of savages, he was killed. His chief lieutenant, Sebastian d'Eleano, continued the voyage, and after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, brought the San Vittoria--name of happy omen--to anchor at St. Lucar, near Seville, on 7th of September, 1522. Brought, too, the story of a circumnavigated globe, and of new groups of stars never seen under northern skies.