238    LITERATURE   OF   LOUISIANA   TERRITORY.
COLUMBUS.
(From ' Columbus and Columbia.")
The story of Columbus is at once an epic and au elegy;
a narration of bold conception, persistent courage, heroic
attainment, mingled with the gall of national ingratitude
and the malevolence of personal jealousies. The adven-
tures of the Homeric Ulysses were not more illustrious
with valor j the afflictions of NIobe were not more tearful
with despair. East and west of his life there were bitter-
ness and shadows: radiant Hope tip-toeing on the pedestal
of wonderous accomplishments, and Faith bowing with
grief before envious and invidious rivalry. No character
in the world's history was ever more highly honored for
chivalrous achievement; none more maligned by perfidy or
oppressed by the spitefulness of malice. He was a product
of the brave days of old, yet was he a victim to the spiritthat
gave birth to intolerance and persecution; for the heroism
that sought a reclamation of the holy sepulcher; that pro-
duced Ruy Diaz Campeador (the Cid); that measured
lances with Mohammed-al-Nasir on the decisive and bloody
field of Las Navas de Tolosa, was twin brother to the theop-
athy that established the Inquisition.
If we consider the slavishly superstitious, the intolerantly
bigoted, the audaciously savage age in which he lived,
which was characterized bv the most desperate impulses,
we shall be prepared to understand and to appreciate the
disposition and proclivities of Columbus; to applaud his
courage, and to condone his follies. For he was not with-
out human frailties, but these were national — mediaeval —
rather than personal; errors of the times rather than pas-
sions peculiarly his own. His was an age when so-called
civilization saw no wrong in banishing Jews and confiscating
their property to convert it to holy purposes; which be-
lieved that true piety and loyalty to God were be-t mani-
fested by burning heretics at the stake as awful examples,
or by torturing the impious until they confessed the vice of
their unbelief; for, as answered Torquemada, "were it
not better to sanctify men through afflictions of the flesh
than that they be suffered to continue in their evil ways to