Leaves from a Madeira Garden 



science were no less thirsting for a wider know- 

 ledge of the material universe. The great 

 achievements of the Renaissance, says John 

 Addington Symonds, following Michelet, were 

 the discovery of the world and the discovery 

 of man. And the former process did not stop 

 with the voyage of Columbus to America in 

 1492, and the rounding of the Cape by the 

 Portuguese in 1497 ; the solar system was 

 explained by Copernicus in 1507. If we con- 

 trast the history and achievements of the ten 

 centuries preceding these dates with those of 

 the four centuries succeeding them, we may 

 realize what we owe to the intellectual emanci- 

 pation of the fifteenth century. 



The discovery early in the century of rich 

 islands in the Atlantic, of Madeira and the 

 Azores, suggested naturally the possibility, 

 almost the certainty, of fresh discoveries. From 

 time immemorial men had dreamed of a happy 

 land beyond the western wave. The Elysium 

 of Plato's " Timaeus," the Antilla of Aristotle, 

 the Christian legend of the seven bishops 

 who with their followers fled from Spain 

 before the Moors, and were guided miracu- 

 lously to an island of the ocean, whereon they 



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