philanthropists, and ministers of religion, that the German or Historical School is differentiated from the unethical school of political economists whose works are standard in nearly all countries. In England, Professor Thorold Rogers, recently deceased, was the chief political economist of commanding ability whose voice has been heard protesting in the name of science against economic injustice. "In France," says Professor Richard T. Ely, "political economy has degenerated into a mere tool of the powerful classes." The same may be said of the United States, if we except Dr. Ely's own work. He is an earnest advocate of the ethical method. Nearly all the books which have influence among us consist of works of the domi nant school, on the one hand, and books advocating revolutionary theories, on the other; both of which ignore Christian ethics as a possible factor in molding the economic life of individuals and of the nation. The revolutionary theories are, to a large extent, the result of a reaction from unethical teaching in places of authority.

What is needed, then, is a political economy that shall in theory and practice admit Christianity to its divinely intended place as a controlling force over the conduct of men in the pursuit of wealth; that shall show, not only what is, but what ought to be-show what is as a warning and as a guide by contrast with what should be; that shall be a science of common well-being, and shall insist that no nation in which the rights and welfare of any class are ignored can make true progress; that shall seek to substitute altruistic for egoistic aims, and to displace the purely selfish "economic man" by one governed by the Golden Rule.

Chas, H. Zimmerman

ART. VI.—THE CHARACTER OF COLUMBUS. COLUMBUS is described by Alexander Humboldt as "a giant standing on the confines between medieval and modern times, and his existence marks one of the greatest epochs in the history of the world." The translator of Professor Francesco Tarducci's recent Life of Columbus, writing of the application already made to the Roman pontiff for the canonization of the celebrated discoverer, uses still stronger language, saying;

When we consider the work that Columbus performed. . . and the pure intention of glorifying God from which he acted, we must confess him one that seems worthy of religious veneration; . . . his wonderful observation of natural phenomena, his sagacity in explaining them, and the glorious plans which his genius conceived and his energy carried out, we must look upon him as one of the greatest of men.

That there is an obverse side to this flattering portraiture of the man who to-day is the idol of many minds is shown by Mr. John Fiske in the preface to his Discovery of America. Writing of the difference concerning the personal character of Columbus between the view given of it in his work and that of Mr. Winsor in his recent Life of Columbus, he says:

Mr. Winsor writes in a spirit of energetic (not to say violent) reaction against the absurdities of Roselly de Longues and others who have tried to make a saint of Columbus; and under the influence of this reaction he offers us a picture of the great navigator which serves to raise a pertinent question. No one can deny that Las Casas was a keen judge of men, or that his standard of right and wrong was quite as lofty as anyone has reached in our own time. He had much more intimate knowledge of Columbus than any modern historian can ever hope to acquire, and he always speaks of him with warm admiration and respect. But how could Las Casas ever have respected the feeble, mean-spirited driveler whose portrait Mr. Winsor asks us to accept as that of the discoverer of America?

Yes; this is a "pertinent question." Perhaps there is no better method of solving it than that which Macaulay suggested in his caustic review of Montagu's Life of Bacon. Macaulay claimed that Mr. Montagu, having assumed Bacon to be an eminently virtuous man, had proceeded to judge "the fruit by the tree." Forced to admit that some of Bacon's actions were not 49-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.

defensible, when measured by strict ethical principles, he had insisted that any explanation of them was more probable than that Bacon could have done anything very wrong. The extreme eulogists of Columbus appear in like manner to have taken the high character of their hero for granted, and inferred from it that his actions, if not always strictly right, were at least excusable; or, as Mr. Winsor charges Washington Irving with having done in his charming biography of the great discoverer, they "determined to create a hero," and then "glorified what was heroic, palliated what was unheroic, and minimized the doubtful aspects of Columbus's character." Both of these methods are obviously wrong and misleading. To rightly estimate him his actions must be impartially viewed as the fruit of his character. When thus studied it will appear that he was not a saint, as De Longues claims, nor a perfect hero, as Irving portrays him, nor a driveling scamp, as Aaron Goodrich, one of his biographers, contended, but a brave, intelligent, resolute mariner, with strong scientific instincts, whom Providence guided to the discovery of a previously unknown continent, but whose life was spotted by many deeds which dim the glory that yet illuminates his name.

Notwithstanding much persistent historical research very little is certainly known respecting the early life of Columbus. That he was born in Genoa is generally admitted; but the year of his birth is still problematical. Irving, Tarducci, and Fiske accept 1435 or 1436 as its probable date. Winsor favors 1446 or 1447. His admirers have spent much time in the vain endeavor to prove that he was nobly descended, but the fact remains that his father, Domenico Colombo, was a respectable wool weaver and "the keeper of a house of entertainment." Fortune he had none. His ancestors for two or three generations had followed the same useful calling. Thus Columbus was, as Napoleon once claimed to be, his own ancestor. His son Ferdinand was content to have it so; for after his father's death, when some of his ardent admirers began to search for evidence that the deceased admiral had noble blood in his veins, Ferdinand very sensibly said:

I think it better that all the honor be derived to us from his person than to go about to inquire whether our father was a merchant or a man of quality that kept his hawks and hounds.

The opening years of Columbus's career are enveloped in a cloud hitherto impenetrable, except through here and there a rift. It is known, says Winsor, that the wool combers of Genoa had established schools for the education of their children. It is scarcely to be doubted, therefore, that young Christopher, while learning his father's trade, was sent to one of those schools. There he learned to be a good penman, and probably acquired the skill to draw maps by which in after years he gained a livelihood. Some authorities affirm that he was for a brief period a student in the University of Pavia, where he acquired some knowledge of the principles of cosmography, astrology, and geometry; others find no evidence that he was ever at a university. Be this as it may, it is hardly doubtful that when he was about fourteen years old he became a sailor. Probably his naturally adventurous nature, acted upon by the ruling spirit of his native city, moved him to this step. As Tarducci observes, Genoa was at that period supported by the sea on which her citizens had won wealth, power, and fame. Her most illustrious citizens were or had been "children of the sea." Hence stories

of the sea filled the minds and excited the imaginations of the boys of Genoa, begetting in them from their earliest years "a taste for the sea and for a sailor's life." It is safe, therefore, to conclude that the spirit which ruled in Genoa led Columbus, while yet a boy, to seek fortune and fame on the sea.

Some of his biographers have told stirring tales of the experiences and feats of Columbus between the time of his becoming a sailor and the year 1470, when he left Italy and took up his abode in Portugal. But the careful and dispassionate investigations of modern historians have discredited those tales as being little else than creations of the imagination. Winsor says, "Everything is misty about those early days." Fiske thinks that those youthful years "were not all spent at sea. Somewhere," he says, "Columbus not only learned Latin but found. time to study geography, with a little astronomy and mathematics, and to become an expert draughtsman." He seems to have gone "to and fro upon the Mediterranean in merchant voyages, now and then taking part in sharp scrimmages with Mussulman pirates." At intervals he was probably "found in Genoa earning his bread by making maps and charts, for which there was a great and growing demand."

After 1470, or 1473, as Winsor fixes the date, Columbus becomes more visible to the historian's eye. His younger brother, Bartholomew, was in Lisbon making maps and charts, in which, like Christopher, he was an expert. The reputation of the Portuguese as daring mariners and successful explorers was well known in Genoa. These facts and his knowledge that other citizens of Genoa were settled in Lisbon engaged in profitable traffic are sufficient to account for the departure of Columbus from Italy to take up his residence in Portugal. But his life in Lisbon was not wholly spent in map-making, for he himself recorded that while Lisbon was his home he made more than one voyage down the African coast with Portuguese expeditions. Some three years after Columbus had taken up his abode in Lisbon a romantic incident happened which proved to be an important link in the chain of events which led him to the great work of his life. He was one day at a religious service in the chapel of the Convent of All Saints when a charming young lady, named Philippa Moñiz de Perestrelo, attracted by his very striking person, conceived a strong affection for him. Las Casas, as cited by Fiske, describes him as being at that time "a man of noble and commanding presence, tall and powerfully built, with fair, ruddy complexion, and keen blue-gray eyes that easily kindled, while his waving white hair must have been quite picturesque. His manner was at once courteous and cordial, and his conversation charming. There was an indefinable air of authority about him, as befitted a man of great heart and lofty thoughts." Philippa, says Winsor, "sought him with such expressions of affection that he easily yielded to her charms," and after a brief acquaintance made her his bride.

Philippa's family had an estate at Porto Santo, an island lying three hundred miles from the coast of Portugal. Going thither with his wife, Columbus found among the papers of her deceased father a large number of nautical notes and sailing charts. The study of these documents is supposed by some, albeit Winsor questions it, to have prompted Columbus to the conception of a western passage by sea to Asia, and to a correspondence with Toscanelli, one of the most famous cosmographers of the time, which developed his conception into a conviction that Asia could be reached by sailing westward on the Atlantic Ocean. Through Toscanelli he also learned of