,"
delivered at a meeting of the Historical Society of New York in
1853.

No chapter of romance equals the interest of this expedition. The most
fascinating of the works of fiction which have issued from the modern
press have, to my taste, no attraction compared with the pages in which
the first voyage of Columbus is described by Robertson, and still more
by our own Irving and Prescott, the last two enjoying the advantage over
the great Scottish historian of possessing the lately discovered
journals and letters of Columbus himself. The departure from Palos,
where a few years before he had begged a morsel of bread and a cup of
water for his way-worn child; his final farewell to the Old World at the
Canaries; his entrance upon the trade-winds, which then for the first
time filled a European sail; the portentous variation of the needle,
never before observed; the fearful course westward and westward, day
after day and night after night, over the unknown ocean; the mutinous
and ill-appeased crew; at length, when hope had turned to despair in
every heart but one, the tokens of land--the cloud banks on the western
horizon, the logs of driftwood, the fresh shrub floating with its leaves
and berries, the flocks of land birds, the shoals of fish that inhabit
shallow water, the indescribable smell of the shore; the mysterious
presentment that seems ever to go before a great event; and finally, on
that ever memorable night of October 12, 1492, the moving light seen by
the sleepless eye of the great discoverer himself from the deck of the
Santa Maria, and in the morning the real, undoubted land swelling up
from the bosom of the deep, with its plains and forests, and hills and
rocks and streams, and strange new races of men. These are incidents in
which the authentic history of the discovery of our continent exceeds
the specious wonders of romance, as much as gold excels tinsel, or the
sun in the heavens outshines the flickering taper.

THE COLUMBUS OF THE HEAVENS--SCORNED.

Dominicans may deride thy discoveries now; but the time will come when
from two hundred observatories, in Europe and America, the glorious
artillery of science shall nightly assault the skies; but they shall
gain no conquests in those glittering fields before which thine shall be
forgotten. Rest in peace, great Columbus of the heavens![36] like him
scorned, persecuted, broken-hearted.--_Ibid._

FAME.

We find encouragement in every page of ou