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this great man perceived his own previous judgment, concerning regions lying to the west, to be most firmly corroborated by new arguments. In this respect also, it is carefully to be considered, that the ancient Icelandic writings, at this period, were by no means hidden on the shelves of librarians or antiquaries, but from daily reading and lecturing were familiar to the whole people. Hence it happened that well instructed clergymen and magistrates had diligently examined these ancient accounts, and particularly those remarkable descriptions of regions lying to the southwest of Iceland and Greenland." In confirmation of the positions here taken, M. Rafn refers to a dissertation of Mr. Zahrtmann, inserted in the Northern Journal of Antiquities, (which we have not seen), on the voyage of the brothers Zeni; and to an essay of Professor Magnussen on the commerce between Bristol and Iceland in the fourteenth century. A passage is cited from this essay, in which its learned author commemorates a bishop of Skalkholt in Iceland, Magnus Eyolfson, of eminent learning, who in 1477 is known to have visited the churches near Hvalfjardareyri (which was the port principally visited by vessels from Bristol), and he adds, "Cum Columbo ibidem Latinè conversans, ei, de occidentalibus terris interroganti, narrationes de itineribus Gudleivi Gudlægi filii aliorumque Borealium verisimiliter retulit." This Gudleif is commemorated in one of the fragments, which we were compelled to omit, as having been driven, on a voyage to Iceland, to the shores of Vinland. We do not know that exception need be strongly taken to the statements now cited of M. Rafn and his learned coadjutor, inasmuch as they limit themselves to the assertion of probabilities. It may, however, be proper to remark, that, as far as we know, no account of the life of Columbus preserved to us contains any trace of these conferences. In none of his writings, and in none of the charges brought against him by his enemies, is there an allusion to these supposed northern communications. M. de Humboldt, the gravest authority on every question of this kind, avers, that "the merit of having the first recognised the discovery of America by the Northmen belongs indubitably to the geographer Ortelius, who announced this opinion in 1570." Although it might be keenly urged, that after Columbus had made his discovery, he would selfishly have suppressed every allusion to the

fact of his Icelandic conferences, yet there was a long and a weary period of his life, when he would have spared no pains to blazon them to the courts of Spain and Portugal, as confirmations of the reasonableness of his projects. But not a syllable remains, containing a trace of his having used these northern accounts for that purpose. If we suppose that he held these conferences with Bishop Magnus and others in 1477, we must believe that he kept them closely locked up in his own bosom, alike when it was, as when it was not, his interest to disclose them.

The remark of M. Rafn, that, at the close of the fifteenth century, the discoveries of the eleventh century were rendered familiar to the intelligent portion of the Icelandic community, by reading and lectures, is, we think, made without due consideration. It supposes a greater degree of familiarity with the subject then, than probably exists even now. A poor foreign navigator at the present day, arriving, we will not say merely at a port of Iceland, but at Copenhagen itself, on a trading voyage, would not be very likely to fall in with an individual, who had ever heard of Vinland. We deem M. Humboldt's views on this point much sounder. "In the second half of the fifteenth century, at a period when for three hundred and fifty years all navigation to Vinland had been interrupted, the recollection of the Greenland discoveries could not have been sufficiently distinct, to come to the knowledge of a Genoese navigator, who certainly had as little thought of the Sagas of the country, as of the Manuscripts of Adam of Bremen. This celebrated ecclesiastical geographer, who describes Courland and a part of Prussia as forming islands in the Baltic, was undoubtedly acquainted with Vinland in the eleventh century, but his ecclesiastical history and his Scandinavian chorography were printed for the first time, seventy-three years after the death of Columbus."

There is another very sagacious remark of M. de Humboldt in this connexion. He observes, that "the object of Columbus was to find a way to India, in order that he might reach the Spice Islands by a western passage. He might have learned that the Scandinavian settlers of Greenland had discovered Vinland; and that fishermen from Friesland had touched at a land which they called Drogeo, but neither of these would have seemed in any degree connected with his No. 98.

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projects. Vinland and Drogeo acquire their interest for us from the certainty of the continuity of the coast from Cape Paria to the mouth of the St. Lawrence." Till the discoveries of Columbus, and the light thrown by them upon the geography of the newly discovered Atlantic regions, the traditions of the Northern discoverers would, even on the part of those who most firmly believed them, have been supposed to refer to some region of limited extent in the Northern or Western Sea bearing the like relations as Iceland, Greenland, and Ireland, to the rest of the world. It is distinctly related in the accounts we have cited, that Thorhall and his eight companions, who left the main body under Thorfinn, to seek in a boat the former settlements of Leif, were blown upon the coast of Ireland. No person whose whole knowledge of Vinland was derived from these traditions, would have formed the slightest conception of the magnitude of the American continent, of its distance from Europe, or its relations to the geography of the world. It may be said, that this reflection neutralizes the force of the argument against the probability that Columbus had heard of the discovery of Vinland, drawn from the fact, that he did not appeal to that discovery in support of his own project. This is true; but supposing Columbus, while in Iceland, to have heard of Vinland, it either did or it did not appear to him to confirm, by actual experience, the truth of his great theory. If it did, then it is inexplicable that he should have made no use of these discoveries, in sustaining his own projects; if it did not, then it is of no interest to establish the fact, that he acquired a knowledge of these discoveries on his visit to Iceland. In concluding this topic, we ought to say that nothing is farther from our purpose, than to impute to Messrs. Rafn or Magnussen a design to detract from the glory of Columbus. All that they appear desirous of rendering probable is, that "his opinions, previously formed," (as we know they were, by his letter to Toscanelli of 1474,*) "were confirmed," by the knowledge of the discovery of Vinland.

With these remarks, we dismiss the subject for the present, renewing our thanks to M. Rafn, the learned and indefatigable editor of the volume before us, and to the Royal

* Irving's Columbus, Vol. I. p. 35

Society of Danish Antiquaries, under whose patronage he has been enabled to bring it before the public, in so handsome a style of typography. It is one of the most valuable contributions ever made to the study of the history and geography of our continent. We trust that some zealous student of these subjects will be immediately found, who will put the Icelandic authorities into an English dress, and prepare them, with a proper literary apparatus, for the perusal of the general reader.

ART. X. History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic. By WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. In Three Volumes. Boston; American Stationers' Company. John B. Russell.

THE reign of Ferdinand and Isabella has been diu desideratum in English, indeed we may say, European literature. Saving the invidiousness of national distinctions in Anglo-Saxon literature, we might add American;- for it seems now to be fairly admitted, that some faint gleams of a literary dawning in the West, have at last, reversing Nature's order, become distinctly visible to foreign optics. It is certainly astonishing that the most brilliant page of modern European history (for such we esteem this era of Spain,) should have been left unwritten for three centuries. Equally astonishing it may be abroad, that it should have been first written on this speculating side of the Atlantic, and in this monetary age, (a vile invention,) by a scholar heretofore unheard of in the world of letters.

We have said, unwritten. In our own language this is literally true; and almost equally so in any language of Europe, unless we go back to the old contemporary chroniclers,-mere malleable materials, or to the Spanish historiographers of the sixteenth century, who wrote not even in their mother tongue, but in the universal language of the learned in that day; a dead language then, vainly attempted to be revived, since buried, and in great danger, alas ! of being absolutely forgotten. Within human memory, two petty works only have appeared upon the transatlantic continent, professing to be histories of this reign ; one in French, and one in German. Our author,

in his Preface, with all becoming courtesy, commends each of them moderately; and sooth to say, very moderate commendation is quite as much as the subjects deserve. Their slender notoriety is, perhaps, proof enough of this, considering that both were published some distance back in the last century. What native currency they may have had in their day, we know not; but we much doubt whether many English or American scholars of the nineteenth century have ever heard of either Vincent Mignot, or Rupert Becker, or their respective histories. Yet the Abbé Mignot was a member of the French Academy,-"conseiller clerc au grand conseil,". a nephew of Voltaire's, rich and liberal withal, — why not justly entitled to all the patronage of letters which his merits would permit? He is commended, too, in the "Biographie Universelle," as a very laborious and learned man, who wrote several historical works; among them a History of the Empress Irene, a History of Joanna the First, Queen of Naples, a History of the Ottoman Empire, the most esteemed of his productions, and, in 1766, "Histoire des Rois Catholiques Ferdinand et Isabelle," in two small duodecimos, on which the remark of his biographer is, "sujet bien choisi, mais exécuté médiocrement;" which means, a miserable book. It is added, "the author never cites his authorities; but one may easily see he has consulted only Mariana and Ferreras." Indeed, one may easily see that with half an eye; for he himself candidly states it in his own preface. "Excepting for the discovery of the New World," says he, "I have not found, in all the authors who form the collection entitled Hispania Illustrata," (a voluminous and learned compilation,) "nor elsewhere, any thing, or scarcely any thing, which Mariana and Ferreras, the two Spanish historians best known, have not recorded." This is much as if one were now to write a work devoted exclusively to the reign of Elizabeth, and tell us he could find nothing on the subject worth looking at, besides Hume and Lingard. For Mariana and Ferreras wrote histories of Spain, the one in Latin and Spanish, the other in Spanish alone, quite as general, as the English histories referred to. Mariana's, as old as the sixteenth century, used to enjoy a high reputation; but more for graces of style, than for profoundness or accuracy. Ferreras is not thought to have even this degree of literary merit. He is esteemed little more than a laborious annalist, who, between 1700 and 1732, published

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