410 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[APRIL, 



again followed. Applications for relief were 

 made to Ovanclo at St. Domingo, and for 

 a time disregarded ; and all his mortifica- 

 tions were aggravated by the intelligence 

 he received of the oppressions practised on 

 the natives, and the general ruin of that 

 beautiful island. The population, which 

 has been stated at a million, though pro- 

 bably above the mark, was utterly annihi- 

 lated, by wars, hard work, and cruelties. 

 Africans were introduced to supply their 

 place ; and Columbus had himself indeed 

 brought negroes from Spain such as were 

 born there, and brought up Christians 

 which was the introductory step to the 

 African slave trade for the West Indies. 

 Obtaining at last a ship from Ovando, he 

 landed at St Domingo, and after being 

 treated with some shew of civility, he finally 

 returned to Spain to seek redress, and the 

 restoration of his honours and authority ; 

 but his patroness was now on her death- 

 bed, and Ferdinand still impracticable ; and 

 Columbus himself, worn out with labours 

 and exertions, shortly afterwards followed 

 his royal mistress. His son had somewhat 

 better luck he married into one of the 

 noblest families of Spain, and through the 

 influence of his new connexions, recovered 

 Koine of his father's rights, and transmitted 

 them to his descendants. 



So much for the outline of Columbus's 

 story, which Mr. Irving has in general well 

 filled up. Columbus, apparently, was not 

 a man calculated to conciliate his cotempo- 

 raries. He was for carrying all by force of 

 argument, and when ethers doubted, was 

 offended. He was peremptory on points, 

 which he could net demonstrate. He was 

 a foreigner and unsupported and jea- 

 lousies were naturally excited against him. 

 Ferdinand, too, had conceded to him powers 

 and privileges which perhaps no services 

 could rightly claim which were granted 

 without calculation, and which, had they 

 been executed, would have made him greater 

 than his master. His personal authority 

 was great, but of course his presence was 

 indispensable, and he could not be every- 

 \vhere. He had not, besides, taken a due 

 measure of his crews and agents ; he looked 

 upon them as machines, and they regarded 

 themselves incurring such risks as they 

 did as fellow-adventurers compan ions 

 entitled to share in the goods the gods 

 should grant them. Had he been obeyed, 

 no doubt the kindliness of his nature would 

 have kept him abhorrent from cruelties, and 

 St. Domingo might quickly have become 

 profitable and flourishing in its own popula- 

 tion ; but the low passions of low men made 

 enemies where he would have made friends, 

 and his absence was the signal for licen- 

 tiousness and misrule. On the matter of 

 discovery, and the rights which discovery 

 gave, he was a perfect fanatic ; he had no 

 scruples or reserves on the right of invasion. 

 Christians might justly enslave heathens 



though he would himself have treated them 

 kindly, had they submitted quietly. To 

 remedy the mischiefs of others, he was 

 tempted to do, what cost him something to 

 reconcile to his sympathies the dispatching 

 slaves from the island in exchange for 

 provisions, but then they were all to be 

 made Christians, and that was a cure for all 

 enormities. Never did any one man, in the 

 records of human nature, commit, and cause 

 to commit, more complicated mischief 

 more intolerable oppression more insolent 

 tyranny. The interests of his fellow-crea- 

 tures were forgotten or scorned, in the 

 pursuit of personal distinction. Benefits to 

 the country that employed him, no doubt, 

 he anticipated to be great ; but they were 

 promoted at the cost of others, and he never 

 for a moment lost sight of his own reward. 

 He is over-estimated our admiration of his 

 abilities, and his persevering resolution, and 

 a New World, as we bombastically phrase 

 it blind us too much to the moral defects 

 of the man. Isabella had glimpses of this, 

 and did something to counteract conse- 

 quences. We should like to see another 

 American, Dr. Channing, handle Colum- 

 bus's character Mr. Washington Irving is 

 too ready to extenuate and apologize. 



Sketches of the War in Greece, ly 

 Philip James Green, Esq., late British 

 Consul for the Morea, $c. ; 1828 This 

 volume of the Messieurs Green, the British 

 Consul and Vice-consul for the Morea, is 

 not by any means an unimportant or un- 

 welcome one. It presents, indeed, no fa- 

 vourable view of the conduct of the Greeks 

 in the prosecution of their unexceptionable 

 cause; but then it is not statements put 

 forth to answer particular purposes, whether 

 favourable or unfavourable, that the public 

 require, or in the long run will approve of, 

 but truth and truth only. Unluckily, how- 

 ever, this truth which the public require 

 meaning those who have no personal bias 

 no interests to warp their sentiments is the 

 hardest thing in the world to get at, and 

 can indeed be got at by no other process 

 than the severest exercise of the coolest 

 judgment in shaking and sifting the op- 

 posing materials, which prejudice and par- 

 tiality, for one or the other, is prettysure to be 

 busy pour into the critical sieve ; without 

 the^e opposing materials the judgment must 

 be utterly at fault. But who will furnish 

 materials save those who are on the spot, 

 and immediately concerned? and this con- 

 cernment it is that alloys the pure gold of 

 truth. Of those who have given us infor- 

 mation relative to the Greeks, some have 

 been either in the service, and well or ill- 

 treated, or wishing to be in it some em- 

 ployed as agents by loan-making friends 

 others closely connected with the Turks, 

 officially or commercially some, prompt- 

 ed by the conviction that things had 

 been exaggerated, took the common course 

 of setting them right by excessive dis- 



