It is, still further, authorized to demand of him if it is strictly just to cause this grand composition, artistic, scientific, and literary, to do honor solely to Luther and Calvin--a composition which, from a certain and strictly proper point of view, would have sufficed to the glory of an epoch--and above all, if it does not do a strange violence to truth to enroll under the banner of Protestantism such men as Petrarch, Shakespeare, Christopher Columbus, Michael Angelo, and Raphael? The name of Shakespeare, indeed, not long since stirred up quite a lively discussion upon this very subject In the eyes of a certain school it seemed to import absolutely that, to the honor of letters, the immortal author of _Hamlet_ and of _Othello_ did not belong to the Church of Rome--as if Corneille and Racine sparkled with any the less brilliancy because they were Catholics, or that the dramatic art had need to be ashamed of _Polyeucte, Esther_, and _Athalie_. The question has been examined with all the attention which it merits, and the conclusion to which a conscientious inquiry seems to bring us is, that, if Shakespeare belonged by his birth to the time of the Reformation, it is not, nevertheless, necessary to ascribe, either to the gospel of Luther and Calvin or to the Draconian Protestantism of Queen Elizabeth, the masterly productions of his genius. As to Christopher Columbus, who does not know, I will not say his obedience and filial devotion to the Church of Rome, but the profound piety of his soul and the tenderness of his religious sentiments? According to the chronicler who has preserved for us in Latin the admirable prayer made by that great man at that solemn hour of his life when, triumphant at last over so many distrusts and so many wrongs, over so many delays and so many obstacles, conqueror, so to speak, of the elements and of men, but always submissive to God, he cast himself upon his knees on the land of the New World, as if to take possession of it in the name of faith. "O God!" he said, "eternal and omnipotent, thou hast by thy holy Word created heaven and earth and sea. Blessed and glorified be thy name; praised be thy majesty which has deigned by thy humble servant to cause that thy holy name should be known and proclaimed in this other part of the world."