"The hand that rounded Peter's dome. And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew." Of these lines of Emerson, the last three are as true of Columbus, as of "The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome," for he, too, "Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew." And shall we therefore say that he is not worthy of praise, of tribute, of memorials, of anniversary days, of centennial years, of national and international gatherings and exhibitions, that in some degree mankind may illustrate and dignify, if they will, the events that have followed the opening of a new world to our advanced and advancing civilization? In great deeds, in great events, in great names, there is a sort of immortality, an innate capacity for living, a tendency to growth, to expansion, and thus what was but of little comment in the beginning is seen, often after the lapse of years, possibly only after the lapse of centuries, to have been freighted with consequences whose value can only be measured by the yearly additions to the sum of human happiness. Franklin's experiments in electricity were followed at once by the common lightning-rod, but a century passed before the electrical power was utilized, and made subservient, in some degree, to the control of men. Every decade of three centuries has added to the greatness of that one immortal name in the literature of the whole English speaking race. The security for the world that the name of Shakespeare and the writings of Shakespeare cannot die may be found in the selfishness, the intelligent selfishness of mankind, which will struggle constantly to preserve and to magnify a possession which if once lost, could never be regained. After four centuries of delay we have come to realize, with some degree of accuracy, the magnitude of the event called the Discovery of America. Identified with that event, and as its author, is the man Columbus. Involved in controversies while living, the object of the base passions of envy, hatred and jealousy, consigned finally to chains and to prison, and in death ignorant of the magnitude of the discovery that he had made, there seemed but slight basis for the conjecture that his name was destined to become the one immortal name in the annals of modern Italy and Spain. As if accident and fate and the paltry ambitions of men had combined to rob Columbus of his just title to fame, the name of the double continent that he discovered was given to another. To that other the name remains, but the continent itself has become the continent of Columbus. In connection with the event no other name is known, and so it will ever be in all the centuries of the future.