636 



COSMOS. 



1493 and 1494, " bring us new wonders from a new world 

 from those antipodes of the west which a certain Genoese 

 {Cfrristopliorus quidam, vir Ligur\ has discovered. Although 

 sent forth by our monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, he could, 

 with difficulty, obtain three ships, since what he said was re- 

 garded as fabulous. Our friend, Pomponius Lcetus (one of 

 the most distinguished promoters of classical learning, and 

 persecuted at Rome for his religious opinions), could scarcely 

 refrain from tears of joy, when I communicated to him the first 

 tidings of so unhoped for an event." Anghiera, from whom 

 we take these words, was an intelligent statesman at the 

 Court of Ferdinand the Catholic and of Charles V., once 

 ambassador at Egypt, and the personal friend of Columbus, 

 Amerigo Vespucci, Sebastian Cabot, and Cortes. His long 

 life embraced the discovery of Corvo, the westernmost island 

 of the Azores, the expeditions of Diaz, Columbus, Gama, and 

 Magellan. Pope Leo X. read to his sister and to the car- 

 dinals, " until late in the night," Anghiera' s Oceanica. " I 

 would wish never more to quit Spain," writes Anghiera, 

 " since I am here at the fountain head of tidings of the newly 

 discovered lands, and where I may hope, as the historian of 

 such great events, to acquire for my name some renown with 

 posterity. "* Thus clearly did cotemporaries appreciate the glory 

 of events which will survive in the memory of the latest ages. 

 Columbus in sailing westward from the meridian of the 



his qui ab ea redeunt provincia (Hispaniola insula)." The expression, 

 *' Christophorus quidam Colonus," reminds us, I will not say of the too 

 often and unjustly cited "nescio quis Plutarchus" of Aulus Gellius 

 (Noct. Atticce, xi. 16), hut certainly of the " quoclam Cornelio 

 scribente," in the answer written by the King Theodoric to tlie Prince 

 of the ^Estyans, who was to be informed of the true origin of amber, as 

 recorded in Tacitus, Germ., cap. 45. 



* Opus Epistol., No. ccccxxxvii. and Dlxii. The remarkable and 

 intelligent Hieronymus Cardanus, a magician, a fantastic enthusiast, and 

 at the same time an acute mathematician, also draws attention in his 

 " physical problems," to how much of our knowledge of the earth was 

 derived from facts, to the observation of which one man has led. Car- 

 dani Opera, ed. Lugden. 1663, t. ii. probl. pp. 630 and 659, at mine 

 <juibus te laudibus afferam Christophore Columbi, non familiaa tantum, 

 non Genuensis urbis, non Italise Provinciae, non Europae, partis orbis 

 solum, sed humani generis decus. I have been led to compare the 

 '* problems" of Cardanus with those of the later Aristotelian school, 

 because it appears to me remarkable, and characteristic of the sudden, 



