and offer up thanksgiving.  All his great enterprises were undertaken in the name of the Holy Trinity, and he partook of the holy sacrament previous to embarkation.  He observed the festivals of the church in the wildest situations.  The Sabbath was to him a day of sacred rest, on which he would never sail from a port unless in case of extreme necessity.  The religion thus deeply seated in his soul diffused a sober dignity and a benign composure over his whole deportment; his very language was pure and guarded, and free from all gross or irreverent expressions.

A peculiar trait in his rich and varied character remains to be noticed; namely, that ardent and enthusiastic imagination which threw a magnificence over his whole course of thought.  A poetical temperament is discernible throughout all his writings and in all his actions.  We see it in all his descriptions of the beauties of the wild land he was discovering, in the enthusiasm with which he extolled the blandness of the temperature, the purity of the atmosphere, the fragrance of the air, “full of dew and sweetness,” the verdure of the forests, the grandeur of the mountains, and the crystal purity of the running streams.  It spread a glorious and golden world around him, and tinged everything with its own gorgeous colors.

With all the visionary fervor of his imagination, 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.  What visions of glory would have broken upon his mind could he have known that he had indeed discovered a new continent equal to the old world in magnitude, and separated by two vast oceans from all the earth hitherto known by civilized man!  How would his magnanimous spirit have been consoled amid 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 would arise in the beautiful world he had discovered, and the nations, and tongues, and languages which were to fill its land with his renown, and to revere and bless his name to the latest posterity!

Note.—­Christopher Columbus (b. 1436, d. 1506) was the son of a wool comber of Genoa.  At the age of fifteen he became a sailor, and in his voyages visited England, Iceland, the Guinea coast, and the Greek Isles.  He was an earnest student of navigation, of cosmography, and of books of travel; thus he thoroughly prepared himself for the great undertaking which led to the discovery of America.  He struggled against every discouragement for almost ten years before he could persuade a sovereign to authorize and equip his expedition.

XLVIII.  “HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP.” (195)