out himself, and misrepresented facts when the
truth proved inconvenient to him; that he was vain and boastful to a
degree that can only excite our compassion. He was naturally and
sincerely pious, and drew from his religion much strength and spiritual
nourishment; but he was also capable of hypocrisy, and of using the
self-same religion as a cloak for his greed and cruelty. What is the
final image that remains in our minds of such a man? To answer this
question we must examine his life in three dimensions. There was its
great outline of rise, zenith, and decline; there was its outward
history in minute detail, and its conduct in varying circumstances; and
there was the inner life of the man's soul, which was perhaps simpler
than some of us think. And first, as to his life as a single thing. It
rose in poverty, it reached a brief and dazzling zenith of glory, it set
in clouds and darkness; the fame of it suffered a long night of eclipse,
from which it was rescued and raised again to a height of glory which
unfortunately was in sufficiently founded on fact; and as a reaction
from this, it has been in danger of becoming entirely discredited, and
the man himself denounced as a fraud. The reason for these surprising
changes is that in those fifty-five years granted to Columbus for the
making of his life he did not consistently listen to that inner voice
which alone can hold a man on any constructive path. He listened to it
at intervals, and he drew his inspiration from it; but he shut his ears
when it had served him, when it had brought him what he wanted. In his
moments of success he guided himself by outward things; and thus he was
at one moment a seer and ready to be a martyr, and at the next moment he
was an opportunist, watching to see which way the wind would blow, and
ready to trim his sails in the necessary direction. Such conduct of a
man's life does not make for single light or for true greatness; rather
for dim, confused lights, and lofty heights obscured in cloud.

If we examine his life in detail we find this alternating principle of
conduct revealed throughout it. He was by nature clever, kind-hearted,
rather large-souled, affectionate, and not very honest; all the acts
prompted by his nature bear the stamp of these qualities. To them his
early years had probably added little except piety, sharp practice, and
that uncomfortable sense, often bred amid narrow and poor surroundings,
that one must keep