Many excellent writers have described this wondrous incident, but none so well as the historian of America, Dr. Robertson, whose eloquent account is borrowed in the preceding lines. The great event occurred on Friday, the 12th of October, 1492, and the connection between the two worlds began. The place he first landed at was San Salvador, one of the Bahamas; and after attaching Cuba and Hispaniola to the Spanish crown, and going through imminent perils by land and sea, he achieved his glorious return to Palos on the 15th of March, 1493. He brought with him some of the natives of the different islands he had discovered, and their strange appearance and manners were vouchers for the facts he stated. The whole town, when he came into the harbour, was in an uproar of delight. "The bells were rung, the cannon fired, Columbus was received at landing with royal honours, and all the people, in solemn procession, accompanied him and his crew to the church, where they returned thanks to Heaven, which had so wonderfully conducted, and crowned with success, a voyage of greater length, and of more importance, than had been attempted in any former age."[E]
LEONARDO DA VINCI, MICHAEL ANGELO, RAFFAELLE, CORREGGIO, TITIAN, (Painters,) SIR PHILIP SYDNEY, RALEIGH, SPENSER, SHAKSPEARE, (1564-1616,) ARIOSTO, TASSO, LOPE DE VEGA, CALDERON, CERVANTES, SCALIGER, (1484-1558,) COPERNICUS, (1473-1543,) KNOX, (1505-1572,) CALVIN, (1509-1564,) BEZA, (1519-1605,) BELLARMINE, (1542-1621,) TYCHO BRAHE, (1546-1601.)
THE REFORMATION--THE JESUITS--POLICY OF ELIZABETH
In the last two years of the preceding century the course of maritime discovery had been accelerated by fresh success. To balance the glories of Columbus in the West, the "regions of the rising sun" had been explored by Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese. This great navigator sailed back into the harbour of Lisbon on the 16th of September, 1499, with the astonishing news that he had doubled the Cape of Storms, which had so alarmed Bartholomew Diaz, and established relations of amity and commerce with the vast continent of India, having traded with a civilized and industrious people at Calicut, a great city on the coast of Malabar. Under these reiterated widenings of men's knowledge of the globe, the human mind itself expanded. Familiar names meet us from henceforth in the most distant quarters of the world. All national or domestic history becomes mixed up with elements hitherto unknown. The balance of power, which is the new constitution of the European States, depends on circumstances and places of the most heterogeneous character. A treaty between France and Spain, or between England and either, is regulated by events occurring on the Amazon or Ganges. The whole world gets more closely connected than ever it was before, and we can look back on the proceedings of previous ages as filling a very narrow theatre, and regulated by very contracted interests, when compared with the universal policies on which public affairs have now to rest. At first, however, the great results of these stupendous discoveries were naturally not observed. Contemporaries are justly accused of magnifying the small affairs of life of which they are witnesses; but this observation does not hold good with respect to the really momentous incidents of human history. A man who saw Columbus return from his voyage, or Guttenberg pulling at his press, could not rise to the contemplation of the prodigious consequences of these two events. He thought, perhaps, a quarrel between two neighbouring potentates, or a battle between France and Spain, the greatest incident of his time. His son forgot all about the quarrel; his grandson had no recollection of the battle; but widening in a still increasing circle, expanding into still more wonderful proportions, were the Discovery of America and the Art of Printing,--showing themselves in combinations of events and changes of circumstances where they were never expected to appear,--the one threatening to overthrow the freedom of every State in Europe by the supremacy of the Spanish crown, the other in reality preventing the chance of that consummation by raising up the indomitable spirit of spiritual liberty. For there now came to the aid of national independence the far more elevating feelings of religious emancipation. Protestantism was not limited in this century to denial of the spiritual authority of popes, but embodied itself also in resistance to the political ambition of kings. America might have enabled Charles the Fifth to conquer all Europe, if the Reformation had not strengthened men's minds with a determination to stand up against oppression.