only to take Genoa for himself. A man of splendid force and confidence,
he ruled wisely, and alone of her rulers up to this time seems to have
been regretted when, in 1466, he died, and was succeeded in the Duchy
of Milan by his son Galeazzo. This man was a tyrant, and ruled like a
barbarian, till his assassination in 1476. There followed a brief space
of liberty in Genoa, liberty endangered every moment by the quarrels of
the nobles, who at last proposed to divide the city among them, and
would have thus destroyed their fatherland, had not Il Moro, Ludovico
Sforza of Milan, intervened and possessed himself of Genoa, which he
held till 1499, when Louis XII of France defeated him, Genoa placing
herself under his protection.

Meanwhile Columbus, that mystical dreamer who might have restored to
Genoa all and more than all she had lost in colonial dominion, was born
and grew up in those narrow streets, and played on the lofty ramparts
and learned the ways of ships. Genoa in her proud confusion heard him
not, so he passed to Salamanca and the Dominicans, and set sail from
Cadiz. Yet he never forgot Genoa, and indeed it is characteristic of
those great men who are without honour in their own country, that they
are ever mindful of her who has rejected them. The beautiful letter
written to the Bank of St. George in 1498 from Seville, as he was about
to set out on what proved to be his last voyage, is witness to this.

"Although my body," he writes, "is here, my heart is always with you.
God has been more bountiful to me than to any one since David's time.
The success of my enterprise is already clear, and would be still more
clear if the Government did not cover it with a veil. I sail again for
the Indies in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, and I return at once;
but as I know I am but mortal, I charge my son Don Diego to pay you
yearly and for ever the tenth part of all my revenue, in order to