CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS is justly honored as the Discoverer of the New World, though he himself was not aware of the full meaning or value of his work. Whatever had been done in that direction by the Northmen centuries before, had been lost in utter oblivion. But the Italian navigator and mystical enthusiast, by profound study of the globes and charts which the science of his day had constructed, was convinced of the possibility of reaching the East by sailing westward, and by his absolute faith in the compass and the now-forgotten astrolabe, was able to realize in a certain measure his strange and visionary project, which the highest reputed wisdom of his time condemned in advance. The discoverer was then rewarded as all the greatest benefactors of the human race have been rewarded,-with opposition, neglect and chains. But his noble soul rose superior to this unworthy treatment, and found its supreme satisfaction in the discharge of duty and submission to the will of God.

Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, about the year 1435 or 1436. His son, Fernando, unwilling, from mistaken pride, to reveal the indigence and humble condition from which his father emerged, has left the biography of Columbus very incomplete. His father followed the trade of a woolcomber, and his ancestors had long occupied a lowly position. The name was Colombo in the Italian; the Latin form was given to it by himself at an early period, in his letters; and conceiving that Colonus was the Roman original, he changed