and coolness amid danger which were essential to the success of the great undertaking that awaited them.

Such being the wants of the commerce of Europe, such the wishes her ambition had resolved to gratify, and such the means she possessed of bringing both to a desirable accommodation, the only element of success now awanting was a navigator of sufficient talent to undertake the solution of the great mystery of the age. For such an adventurous project, the circumstances demanded an able seaman, accurately acquainted with the duties of his profession and the nautical knowledge of his times possessing unwearied perseverance in the midst of obstacles, and a steady composure when surrounded by dangers-qualified to preserve discipline in extremities, and to reduce turbulence to order-quick in suggesting the means of safety when overtaken by peril, but ever cautious to avoid it-skilful in governing others, but more eminently so in controlling himself-whose ardent genius could pursue discovery for its own sake, and surmount difficulty for the renown it would shed around his name-endowed with an enthusiastic spirit which could at all times preserve him from the sickness of disappointed hope, and pour into the drooping hearts of his followers a portion of his own glowing soul-in short, an instance of the power of conjuring up the confiding spirit so strikingly exemplified by the poet

"Nil desperandum Teucro duce et auspice Teucro."

The age required such a man; and such a man was found in Christopher Columbus.

Born, as is now all but universally believed, in the city of Genoa, (for the honour of his birth-place has been the cause of much and intense controversy,) this illustrious man spent part of the earlier half of his life in the service of his native state, where he enjoyed a considerable naval command. The unsettled condition of the Genoese and other Italian states, however, induced him to pursue the path of fame in foreign countries; and he repaired to the court of Portugal, in hopes of being employed in the discovery of the unknown region of the Atlantic. Baffled in such expectations at the Portuguese court, he despatched his brother to England, and proceeded himself to Spain. His plans were for many years rejected as the speculations of a visionary-an imputation which seemed to derive some countenance from the natural euthusiasm of his mind; but after flattering the ideas of conquest of Ferdinand, and engaging to place under the sway of the Spanish sceptre territories far excelling in extent and wealth the European dominions of that cautious monarch, he at length was entrusted with the command of a squadron of three ships, not exceeding in size the small coasting vessels of the present day. With this expedition, and carrying with him about one hundred men, on the third of August, 1492, Columbus sailed from Palos, a sea-port at that time of some note in the province of Andalusia, on his first voyage of discovery. After a passage across the Atlantic, chequered with those hopes of success and those fears of failure which the uncertain nature of his object was calculated to excite, and, at the same time, disturbed by the mutinous disposition of his followers, which it required that energy peculiarly his own to soothe and repress, he at

length, on the night of the 11th of October, discovered the New World! Next morning, he set his foot on St. Salvador, one of the Bahama Islands, in the West Indies, of which he took formal possession in name of their Majesties of Spain. The moment the crews landed, they erected a cross, and, prostrating themselves before it, returned thanks to Almighty God for his goodness in crowning their wishes with success, and landing them in safety through so many dangers. The ceremony of taking possession of the island was witnessed by numbers of the natives, who looked on with silent astonishment, supposing the seamen to be celestial beings who had sailed out of the sky, by which their view of the ocean was bounded. They appeared entirely inoffensive; and both sexes carried their love of primitive simplicity to its utmost extent, declining the encumbrance of all articles of dress whatever. In this voyage, besides others of lesser note, Columbus discovered the large islands of Cuba and St. Domingo, where one of his ships struck a reef, and became a wreck. After erecting a fort on this last island, and leaving in it about forty of his men, he directed his course, with the remaining two vessels, to Spain.

In the passage homeward, a violent storm separated the two ships; and the little bark of the admiral was in such imminent danger, that he he himself, though the best practical seaman of his day, lost all hopes of reaching land. In such a moment of trial and terror, the dread of destruction, which would have been the all-engrossing subject of most minds, seems to have occupied but a secondary place in that of Columbus. His spirit soared above the tempest; and he is found ministering to that lofty fame which was through life the exclusive object of his ambition. "That which afflicted him most," says a late writer on the subject, was the thought that his discovery would be buried with him in the ocean. He adopted the only means that remained to preserve the memory of it. He wrote a brief account of his voyage on two leaves of parchment, and put each of these leaves into a cask that was carefully closed, so as to be impervious to the water. One of these casks was thrown overboard immediately, and the other was allowed to remain on deck, to await the foundering of the vessel. But Providence interfered to save the life of this great man. The wind fell, and the danger disappeared."

66

Another wind drove him into the Tagus, from whence he directed his course to the harbour of Palos, which he had sailed from eight months before. The other vessel reached a northern port of Spain about the same time.

The successful navigator was received in Spain with every demonstration of joy. His progress to the court of his sovereign was less a journey than a triumphal march; and when he appeared before them, and exhibited the rarities and the native Indians who had accompanied him, and modestly gave a relation of his discoveries, he was not allowed to retain the posture of homage he had assumed, but, in addition to many marked tokens of consideration, was reckoned worthy of distinguished honours and dignities.

The success of the first expedition opened the eyes of the Spanish monarch to the importance of the discovery; and Columbus, from being

the master of three miserable vessels, now found himself the admiral of a fleet of seventeen sail. With this armament he sailed from Cadiz on 25th September, 1493; and, retracing his steps, after a favourable voyage, descried the Island of Dominica. In this voyage also, he added Jamaica to his discoveries; but discontent having broke out among his crew, he found himself obliged to return home, where he was a second time received with distinguished favour.

Four years afterwards, with six vessels, he made a third voyage to the Western World, when he discovered Trinidad. He traced the South American coast from the Gulf of Paria a considerable way to the westward, and thereafter proceeded to St. Domingo. Here he found a colony, which had been left under the government of his brother, in a state of the greatest insubordination. Numbers of colonists, discontented with the viceroyalty of Columbus, transmitted complaints to the Government in Spain. A new governor was sent out, to restore order to the distracted settlement. The first act of this personage-who appears to have been a man of weak talent, but hasty temper-was to arrest Columbus, and put him in irons; and, thus degraded, was he conveyed home to Spain. The native pride of his mind still supported him under the infliction of this indignity-so much so, that he refused on the voyage to have his fetters taken off, and even expressed a wish that they might be hung upon his tomb, as a memorial of the vicissitudes of his life. It was, indeed, a moral lesson, qualified to speak volumes to a sensibility less intensely acute than that of the illustrious subject of its severity;-one day, the governor and admiral of the Indies the next, a prisoner, and in chains.

When he arrived in Spain, these tidings roused public indignation; and he was speedily consoled, not only by his release to freedom, but by the favour of the King and Queen, the latter of whom ever continued his friend. But he found every effort unavailing, either to obtain the stipulated rewards of his discoveries, or to be reinstated in his govern

ment.

His restless spirit, however, could ill brook an inactive life. On the 9th May, 1502, with four small vessels, the largest being only seventy tons burthen, he sailed on his fourth and last voyage. The first land he reached was Martinique. Thence he directed his course to Honduras, and, latterly, surveyed the coast southward to the Gulf of Darien. His fleet was afterwards wrecked on Jamaica; and it was not till he had languished a whole year by the wreck, that he was relieved from his desolate condition by a vessel sent to bring him away by the governor of St. Domingo. Broken-down in health, and in extreme poverty, he sailed for Spain in 1504. His claims, though not openly disputed, were secretly disregarded; and the greatest man of his times was suffered to pass the last years of his life in penury and want. He died at Valladolid, of a broken heart, on the 20th of May, 1506, and in about the seventieth year of his age.

We have thus lingered on the voyages of Columbus, because, independent of the intrinsic nobleness of his character, and the magnanimous traits with which every page of his history is pregnant, it is to him, and to him alone, that we are indebted for lifting the veil of mystery which

hung over the Western Ocean, and laying open the sources of wealth, dominion, and knowledge. He it was that emancipated geographical science from the bondage of ignorance and fable, and discovered to astonished Europe "the unknown companion that had been sleeping for ages by her side." Yet to him the knowledge of the true value of his achievement was not vouchsafed. "With all the visionary fervour of his imagination," says Washington Irvine, "its fondest dreams fell short of the reality. He died in ignorance of the real grandeur of his discovery. Until his last breath, he entertained the idea that he had merely opened a new way to the old resorts of opulent commerce, and had discovered some of the wild regions of the East. He supposed Hispaniola to be the ancient Ophir which had been visited by the ships of Solomon, and that Cuba and Terra Firma were but remote parts of Asia. What visions of glory would have broke upon his mind, could he have known that he had indeed discovered a new continent, equal to the whole of the Old World in magnitude, and separated by two vast oceans from all the earth hitherto known by civilized man! and how would his magnanimous spirit have been consoled amidst the afflictions of age, and the cares of penury-the neglect of a fickle public, and the injustice of an ungrateful king-could he have anticipated the splendid empires which were to spread over the beautiful world he had discovered; and the nations, and tongues, and languages, which were to fill its lands with his renown, and to revere and bless his name to the latest posterity!"

[To be continued.]

CITY SKETCHES.-No. III.

THE DREAM OF THE FEVERED.

A WEIGHT is on my limbs, and a cloud is on my brain;
My sorrow and my wrongs are forgotten in my pain;
The blood is throbbing wildly in this burning heart of mine;
And my senses swim and reel, like one that's drunk with wine.

This dimly-darkened room, this lonely bed,
Tell of the present, though the past hath fled.

I sleep calmly for a moment, and my memories return;
Full of sorrow, full of longing, for my cottage-home I yearn;
And a spot of silent beauty comes to soothe me in my dream,
Where the moon is shining brightly on a silver-running stream.
Fond memories, that o'er the present cast

A vivid radiance gather'd from the past.

A jasmine-covered cottage is smiling in the light

Reflected from its windows and its walls of pearly white;

And I see the poplars turning their white leaves to the breeze,
And the meadows and the hedgerows, and a thousand things like these.

Ye gentle spirits of my happy home!
I see ye beckon, and ere long I come.

There are voices in the garden like children at their play,

Full of thoughtlessness and laughter, they seem so light and gay;
And a mother fair and gentle is watching them in joy,

But most her eyes are turning to a bright-eyed laughing boy.

Oh, God! this burning brow, this beating head,
Recall the truth;-wife, child, and all, are dead!

Again I dream a moment, and my memory wanders back;
There is sunshine on the past, there is pleasure in its track;
But the present, it is dark and dim; I know not how I came
To be lonely on the earth, with no child to bear my name.

The last, the left of all that love had known;
No joy to cheer me now-alone! alone!

My brain is whirling round, and my eye-balls start and strain,
Yet I feel not earth about me, nor suffering, nor pain.

Lo! the lost ones, they are near me; their breath is on my brow;
Loving, smiling, happy dear ones, we are re-united now!

The glorious future comes, and Hope's bright hand
Beckons me onward to the spirit land!

GLASGOW.

G. A.

"I'LL SEE ABOUT IT TO-MORROW."

On the evils flowing from procrastination, much has been ably and eloquently written. This evil habit is prevalent to a great extent among all classes of society, and holds sway over many who pride themselves on their promptitude and punctuality, and freedom from all dilatoriness, on the pernicious tendencies of which, however, they will loudly declaim. Alive to the defects of their friends and acquaintances, they see not their own, and, wrapped up in fond self-conceit, take upon themselves the office of censor, and sit in judgment on their fellows. Others again there are, who fully perceive the dangers consequent on indulgence in procrastination, and are convinced that they ought to shake themselves clear from its trammels, and stand forth free and unshackled; but who, either from listlessness or sloth, make no effort in this matter, and drag on their existence, the prey of circumstances or the sport of accident.

Procrastination is a habit most easily acquired, but from which it is most difficult to get rid. Let it once obtain a footing in our nature, and it will increase in strength, unless vigorously opposed and continually watched. To put off till to-morrow is so agreeable to the generality of men's natures, that they insensibly defer, till another opportunity, the performance of that which they could as easily and more effectively accomplish at the present moment. The love of ease proves often stronger than the love of duty, and the imperative calls of the latter are lost in the insidious whisperings of the former.

The most inveterate procrastinator will by no means acknowledge that it is right and proper to defer the execution of any work to another