260 COSMOS. 



poraries of Columbus. The most talented among them fore- 

 saw the influence which the events of the latter years of the 

 fifteenth century would exercise on humanity. " Every day," 

 writes Peter Martyr de Anghiera,* in his letters written in 

 the years 1493 and 1494, " brings us new wonders from a new 

 world — from those antipodes of the West — which a certain 

 Geiioese {Christophorus 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 regarded as fabulous. Our friend Pomponius Laetus (one 

 of the most distinguished promoters of classical learning, and 

 persecuted at Rome for his religious opinions) could scarcely 

 refrain Irom tears of joy when I communicated to him the first 

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

 we talie these words, was an intelligent statesman at the 

 court of Ferdinand the Catholic and of Charles V., once em- 

 bassador at Egypt, and the personal friend of Columbus, Amer- 

 igo Vespucci, Sebastian Cabot, and Cortez. 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 new- 

 ly-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 



* Compare Opus Epistolarum Petri Martyris Anglerii Mediolanensts, 

 1G70, ep. cxxx. and clii. " Free laetitia piosiliisse te vixque a lachry- 

 mis prie gaudio temperasse quando literas adspexisti meas, quibus de 

 Autipodium Orbe, lateiiti bactenus, te certiorem feci, mi suavissime 

 Pompoui, iiisinuasti. Ex tuis ipse literis colligo, quid senseris. Sen- 

 sisti autem, tantique rem fecisti, quanti virum summa doctrina insigni- 

 tum decuit. Quis namque cibus sublimibus praestari potest ingeuiis isto 

 suavior ? quod coudimentum gratius ? a me facio conjecturam. Beari 

 sentio spiritus mieos, quaudo accitos alloquor prudentes aliquos ex his 

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

 " Christophonis quidam Colonus," reminds us, I will not say of the too 

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

 {Nod. AtticcB, xi., 16), but certainly of the " quodam Cornelio scri- 

 bente," in the answer written by the King Theodoric to the Frince of 

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

 recorded in Tacitus, Germ., cap. 45. 



t Opvs EpistoL, No. ccccxxxvii. and dlxii. The renjarkable and in- 

 telligent Hieronymus Cardaniis, a magician, a fantastic enthusiast, and, 

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

 ** physical problem-^," to how much of our knowledge of the earth was 



