and feathers and frippery with? Have they not gained a cornucopia of
savages, to support new brigades at home by their enslavement, and new
bishoprics abroad by their salvation? Touching, truly, is the childish
eagerness and _bonhommie_ with which those Spaniards in fancy assume,
as it were, between thumb and finger, this continent, deemed to be
nothing less than gold, and feed with it the leanness of hungry purses;
and the effect is not a little enhanced by the extreme pains they are
at to say a sufficient grace over the imagined meal. "Oh, wonderful,
Pomponius!" shouts the large-minded Peter Martyr. "Upon the surface of
that earth are found rude masses of gold, of a weight that one fears to
mention!... Spain is spreading her wings," etc. He is of the minority
there, who does not suppose this New World a Providential donation to
aid him to dinners, dances, and dawdling, or at best to promote his
"glory" and pride of social estimation. Even Columbus, more magnanimous
than most of his contemporaries, is not so greatly more wise. The
noblest use he can conceive for his discovery is to aid in the recovery
of the Holy Sepulchre. With the precious metals that should fall to his
share, says his biographer, he made haste to vow the raising of a force
of five thousand horse and fifty thousand foot for the expulsion of the
Saracens from Jerusalem. Nor is this the only instance in which even
the noble among men have sought to clutch the grand opening futures,
and wreathe the beauty of their promise about the consecrated graves of
the past. "Servants of Sepulchres" is a title which even now, not
individuals alone, but whole nations, may lawfully claim.

The Old World, we say, seized upon this magnificent new force now
thrown into history, and harnessed it unsuspiciously to its own car, as
if it could have been designed for no other possible use. Happily,
however, the design was different, and Providence having a peculiar
faculty of protecting its own plans, the holding of the reins after