The first thing which I saw through the haze -which fear and excitement spread before my eyes-was the figure of the tall clock which had stood upon the landing. There it was, against the inner wall of the attic, looking at first sight much the same as it always had done. But, as my eyes cleared, I saw that its face was hidden by a veil. This veil was within the glass, and the glass was locked. This veil was a fragment of elaborate design, many-coloured, and embossed with gold and silver thread. I recognized it at once as a portion of one of Mrs. Baraud's Indian scarfs.

There was a good deal of lumber in the room, and the dust lay thick on all things. Spiders had woven their webs in all directions. The strangest peculiarity to be noted was a warm, pungent, aromatic odour, which recalled to me the perfumed mists which used to circle about Mrs. Baraud as she told her eastern stories.

Whether it was derived from strong memory, or from the confusion of my guilty fear, or whether it was simply a sound given forth by some disturbed insect, the regular tick tick of the

Maritime discovery seems rather out of and beyond the sphere of female influence. We know from the records of history that ladies of rank have made war, led armies in person, sustained severe sieges, captured cities, and concluded treaties. We know, also, that they have given earnest and effective encouragement to literature, arts, and sciences, and contributed by their own works to the advancement of these important branches of liberal culture. But it may not have occurred to all our readers that some of the most important and influential enterprises in maritime discovery have been stimulated, supported, and conducted to an effectual termination by the aid of female influence.

Our attention has been directed to this point by reading a recent publication from the press of Messrs. J. B. Lippincott & Co., of Philadelphia* -a large octavo volume, profusely embellished with fine engravings.. It contains a masterly and highly graphic view of maritime discovery in all ages; and is replete not only with valuable historical information, but with lively and detailed accounts of voyages, marked by the most thrilling adventures recorded in the history of mankind.

* "Man upon the Sea; or, a History of Maritime Adventure, Exploration, and Discovery from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time; comprising a Detailed Account of Remarkable Voyages, Ancient

as well as Modern. By Frank B. Goderich, author of The Letters of Dick Tinto,' 'The Court of Napoleon, &c.'"

In reading this volume we could not but remark the important influence exerted by ladies in encouraging and patronizing some of the greatest voyagers in the world; and we have made a few extracts from the volume to illustrate this point. The following shows the noble and magnanimous conduct of Queen Isabella towards Columbus, by which alone he was enabled to proceed on that most remarkable of all voyages, in which he discovered America:

"Not far from Palos, upon the Spanish coast, and in sight of the ocean, stood, upon a promontory half-hidden by pine-trees, a monastery, known as La Rabida, dedicated to the Virgin, and inhabited by Franciscan friars. The superior, Juan Perez de Marchena, offered an example of fervent piety and of theological erudition, at the same time that he was a skilful mathematician and an ardent practitioner of the exact sciences. He was at once an astronomer, a devotee, and a poet. During the hours of slumber, he often ascended to the summit of of the abbey, and, looking out upon the ocean known as the Sea of Darkness, would ask himself if beyond this expanse of waters there was no land yet unclaimed by Christianity. He rejected as fabulous the current idea that a vessel might sail three years to the west without reaching an hospitable shore. The ocean, formidable to others, and intelligible to few, was to him the abode of secrets which man was invited to un

fold.

"One day a traveller rang at the gate and asked for refreshments for himself and his son. Being

interrogated as to the object of his journey, he replied that he was on his way to the court of Spain to communicate an important matter to the king and queen. The traveller was Christopher Columbus. How he came to pass by the obscure monastery, which lay altogether off his route, has never been explained. A providential guidance has brought him into the presence of the man best calculated to comprehend his purposes, in a country where he was totally without friends, and with whose language he was completely unacquainted. A common sympathy drew them together; and Columbus, accepting for a period the hospitality of Marchena, made him a confidant of his views.

"Thus, while the colleges and universities of Christendom still held the childish theory that the earth was flat, and that the sea was the path to utter and outer darkness, Columbus and Marchena, filled with the spontaneous and implicit faith, intuitively believed in the sphericity of the globe and the existence of a nameless continent beyond the ocean. In theory they had solved the great question whether the ship which should depart by the west would come back by the east.

"Marchena gave Columbus a letter of recommendation to the queen's confessor, and during his absence promised to educate and maintain his son Diego. Thus tranquillized in his affections, and aided in his schemes, Columbus departed for Cordova. Here he was destined to undergo another disappointment; for the queen's confessor, his expected patron, treated him as a dreaming speculator and needy adventurer. He soon became again isolated and forgotten. In the midst of his indigence, however, a noble lady (Beatrix Enriquez), young and beautiful, though not rich, noticed his manners and his language (so evidently above his condition), and detained him at Cordova long after his hopes were extinguished. He married her; she bore him a son (Fernando), who afterwards became his father's biographer and historian.

"Columbus now wrote to the king a brief and concise letter, setting forth his desires. It was never answered. After a multitude of similar disappointments, Geraldini, the ambassador of the Pope, presented him to Mendoza, the Grand Cardinal, through whose influence Columbus obtained an audience of Ferdinand, who appointed a junto of wise men to examine and report upon his scheme.

66

This junto, made up of theologians, and not of navigators and geographers, and which sat at Salamanca, opposed Columbus on biblical grounds-declared the theory a dangerous if not an heretical innovation, and finally reported unfavourably. This decision was quite in harmony with public opinion in Salamanca, where Columbus was spoken of as "a foreigner who asserted that the world was round like an orange, and that there were places where the people walked on their heads." Seven years were thus wasted in solicitation, suspense, and disappointment. From time to time Columbus had reason to hope that his proposal would be

reconsidered; but in 1490 the Siege of Baza (the last stronghold of the Moors), and in 1491 the marriage of Isabella (the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella) with Don Alonzo of Portugal, absorbed the attention of their majesties to the exclusion of all scientific pre-occupations. Finally, when the matter was re-opened, and the junto was re-assembled, its president, Fernando de Talavera, was instructed to say that the exhaustion of the treasury necessitated the postponement of the whole subject until the close of the war with Grenada. At last Columbus, reflecting upon the delays, refusals, affronts, and suspicions of which he had been the object, the time he had wasted, and the ante-chambers in which he had waited the condescension of the great, resolved to shake the dust of Spain from his feet, and returned to the abbey of his friend Marchena. He arrived there bearing upon his person the impress of poverty, fatigue, and exhausted patience. Marchena was profoundly annoyed by the reflection that the glory of the future discoveries of Columbus would be thus taken from Spain and conferred upon some rival power. Fearing, however, that he had too readily lent his ear to theories which had been twice rejected as puerile by a competent junto, he sent for an eminent mathematician of Palos-Garcia Hernandez, a physician by profession. They then conferred together upon the subject, and pronounced the execution of the project feasible. The assertion that the famous sailor Martin Alonzo Pinzon was a party to the conference would appear to be an error. Pinzon was at this period at Rome, and did not see Columbus for a year or more afterwards.

"Marchena at once wrote an eloquent letter to Queen Isabella, and intrusted it to a pilot whose relations with the Court rendered him a safe and reliable messenger. He gave the missive into the hands of the Queen, and returned to the monastery the bearer of an invitation to Marchena to repair at once to Santa Fe, where the Court then was engaged in investigating Grenada. Columbus borrowed a mule for the friar, who left secretly at midnight and arrived safely at Santa Fe. That Isabella should, at such a moment, when engaged in war and harrassed by financial embarrassments, listen to a proposition that had been twice condemned by à learned body of men, is a circumstance which entitles her in the highest degree to a share in the glory which her protégé Columbus was, through her, destined to obtain. She received Marchena graciously, and instructed him to summon Columbus, to whom she sent twenty thousand marvedis-seventy dollars, nearlywith which to purchase a horse and a proper dress with which to appear before her.

"Columbus arrived at Santa Fe just before the surrender of Grenada, and the termination of the struggle between the crescent and the cross. He was present at the delivery of the keys of the city, and the abandonment of the Alhambra to Isabella by the Moorish King, Boabdil el Chico. After the official rejoicings the Queen gave audience to Columbus. As she already

believed in the practicability of the scheme, the only subjects to be discussed were the means of execution, and the recompense to be awarded to Columbus in case of success. A committee was appointed to consider the latter point. Columbus fixed his conditions as follows:

"He should receive the title of Grand Admiral of the Ocean.

"He should be Viceroy and Governor-General of all islands and mainlands he might discover. "He should levy a tax for his own benefit upon all productions-whether spices, fruits, perfumes, gold, silver, pearls, or diamondsdiscovered in, or exported from the lands under his authority.

"And his titles should be transmissible in his family, for ever, by the laws of primogeniture.

"These conditions being such as would place the threadbare solicitor above the noblest house in Spain, were treated with derision by the committee, and Columbus was regarded as an insolent braggart. He would not abate one title of his claims, though after eighteen years of fruitless effort he now saw all his hopes at the point of being dashed to the earth. He mounted his mule, and departed for Cordova before quitting Spain for ever.

"Two friends of the Queen now represented the departure of Columbus an irreparable loss, and, by their supplications and protestations, induced her once more to consider the vast importance of the plans he proposed.

"Moved by their persuasions, she declared that she accepted the enterprise, not jointly, as the wife of the King of Spain, but independently as Queen of Castile. As the treasury was depleted by the drains of war, she offered to defray the expenses with her own jewels. A messenger was dispatched for Columbus, who was overtaken a few miles from Grenada. He at first hesitated to return; but, after reflecting on the heroic determination of Isabella, who thus took the initiative in a perilous undertaking, against the report of the junto, the advice of his councillors, and in spite of the indifference of the King, he obeyed with alacrity, and returned to Santa Fe. He was received with distinction by the Court, and with affectionate consideration by the Queen. Ferdinand remained a stranger to the expedition. He applied his signature to the stipulations, but caused it to be distinctly set down that the whole affair was undertaken by the Queen of Castile at her own risk and peril, thus excluding himself for ever from lot or parcel in this transcendent enter prise."

Such is Mr. Goodrich's account of this most important transaction, drawn from the best anthorities. He goes on to give a detailed account of his first voyage, and of the brilliant triumph which Columbus enjoyed on his return, "the princely honours he received in his progress to Barcelona, whither the Court had gone; and his reception by the King and Queen, in which Ferdinand and Isabella rose as he approached, raised him as he knelt to kiss their hands, and

ordered him to be seated in their presence," an honour of vast import in that age of the world.

In his narrative of Columbus's second voyage, which lasted from the 25th of September, 1493, to the 20th of April, 1496, Mr. Goodrich is careful to notice that the Queen wrote to Columbus during his absence, when his enemies were attempting to destroy his character and procure his disgrace; and that on his return "he was summoned to Burgos, then the residence of the Court, where Isabella, forgetting the calumnies of which he had been the object, and the accusations his enemies had heaped upon him, loaded him with favours and kind

ness."

It was during his absence on the third voyage, commenced May 30th, 1498, that Columbus discovered South America; and was superseded by Bobadilla, with extraordinary marks of indignity. In the following passages from Mr. Goodrich's work, Isabella again appears as his friend and supporter-her nobleness of mind forming a striking contrast with the meanness and duplicity of her husband.

"We have not space," says Mr. Goodrich, "to detail the manœuvres and machinations by which the mind of Ferdinand wae prejudiced towards_Columbus, and in consequence of which, Francesco Bobadilla was sent by him, in July, 1500, to investigate the charges brought against the admiral.

Arrogant in his newly acquired honors, Bobadilla took the part of the malcontents (at Hispanolia, where Columbus then was governor), and, placing Columbus in chains, sent him back to Spain. He arrived in Spain on the 20th of November, after the most rapid passage yet made across the ocean. The general burst of indignation at the shocking spectacle of Columbus in fetters compelled Ferdinand to disclaim all knowledge of the transaction. Isabella accorded him a private audience, in which she shed tears at the sufferings and indignities he had undergone. The King kept him waiting nine months, wasting his time in fruitless applications for redress, and finally appointed Nicholas Ovando Governor of Hispaniola in his place.

"Columbus had now advanced in years, and his sufferings and labours had dimmed his eyesight and bowed his frame; but his mind was yet active, and his enthusiasm in the cause of discovery irrepressible. He had convinced himself, and now sought to convince the Queen, that to the westward of the regions he had visited the land converged, leaving a narrow space through which he hoped to pass, and proceed to the Indies beyond. This convergence of the land did in reality exist, but the strait of water he expected to find was and is a strait of land-the Isthmus of Panama. However, the Queen, approved of the plan, and gave him four ships, equipped and victualled for two years. Columbus had conceived the immense idea of passing through the strait, and returning by Asia and the Cape of Good Hope, thus circum

navigating the globe, and proving its spherical form. He departed from Cadiz on the 8th of May, 1502.

"On Columbus's return from this voyage, in the autumn of 1504, he heard with dismay of the illness, and then of the death of his patroness Isabella. Sickness now detained him at Seville till the spring of 1505, when he arrived, exhausted and paralytic, before the King. Here he underwent another courtly denial of redress. His royal patroness was no longer alive to support his claim. He was without protection and without hope. He was compelled to borrow

money with which to pay for a shabby room at a miserable inn. He lingered for a year in poverty and neglect, and died at last in Valladolid, on the 20th of May, 1506. The revolting ingratitude of Ferdinand thus caused the death, in rags, in destitution, and infirmity, of the greatest man that has ever served the cause of progress or laboured in the paths of science. This catastrophe shows that it was Isabella alone who sustained the noble discoverer in his career, there being apparently not another person in Spain who understood his character and did justice to his merit."

Of all the follies which may lead a man to the lunatic asylum or the Bankruptcy Court, the most innocent, to my mind, is the mania for old books: it may be classed with the passion for old china and old lace, which more peculiarly belongs to the ladies. There are numbers of grave, steady people, bitten with this incurable vice; always ready to condemn the faults of others, in order to magnify their own weakness, and betraying their madness when they hope to display their wisdom.

"You have heard this extraordinary piece of news?" said an amateur to me, his face glowing with enthusiasm.

"Yes; the peace is signed."

Nonsense about peace! Mr. S.'s library is sold, and at such a price! Four hundred pounds for the only copy of Pierre Gringoire, on vellum, with the cipher of Diana de Poictiers: that sum to possess on yellow paper and in black letters, miserable poetry which no one would read even if it were legible! What must the ancients be worth then?"

66

Apropos of the classics," said I, "when do you give us your edition of Pliny, which we have expected so long?"

"I am the most miserable of men. Have you seen Leigh Sotheby's last catalogue? An Elzevir Pliny printed on one side only, unique copy, and on vellum; if I cannot get these three volumes my preface will be incomplete, and my honour lost. I am setting out for London: I must have that Pliny at any price."

This friend of mine thinks himself wise; he cares for but one author; and is every day occupied in preparing an edition of Pliny, which he will never publish.

Do you see that man with so amiable an expression on his face? He is the prince of printers, an editor devoted to science, an excellent philologist: he will show you his rich library, make you admire the "Decor Puellarum" with the date of 1461, the masterpiece of Nicolas Janson with infinite trouble and expence he

has collected the early, rude efforts of the printing press; but the first of all Almanacks, the "Planeten Buch" is wanting to his series, and he is now waiting with breathless anxiety for a telegram which will apprize him whether he is the possessor of a treasure he has coveted for years. If some one else carries off these six leaves of discoloured paper, which about 1460 charmed the good people of Mayence, how can he complete his great history of printing?

Turn now, and look at another great collector. From his animated expressive eyes, at once haughty and soft, you guess him to be a poet. You are not far wrong: he is a great writer, the most eloquent of our philosophers, and, above all, a collector. Nothing escapes him: books, manuscripts, engravings, pictures no one possesses such a series of the works published during the reign of Louis the Fourteenth; and at this moment the little volume he holds in his hand is the first edition of "Zayde," on large paper, impressed with the arms of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. Adieu to philosophy for this day. The sage lives only for his new acquisition. What are the praises of men compared with the pleasure he now feels: only think, a unique copy, not worm-eaten, and bound in yellow morocco!

But of all the amateurs who have appeared in our day, the most celebrated is Monsieur Libri, a learned man and a mathematician. He had taken a high place in science, by a work which obtained praise from geometricians-"The History of Mathematical Science in Italy." In the midst of this great work, which unfortunately has never been finished, the taste for antiquarian research seized upon the author, and the mania for collecting books has absorbed his whole soul: henceforward M. Libri has neglected science to make catalogues and collections. It is true that in this art he has no rival: no bibliopolist has ever been more skilful or happy in discovering lost editions.

The greater part of book amateurs shut themselves up to reign alone in one narrow

circle. Some seek only for the publications of the Aldine press; others keep to the single idea of forming their library of Elzevirs; this man values nothing but cuneiform type; a book dated 1500 has no price in his eyes; a second finds a home for Shakspeare alone; a third only knows Dante or Boccaccio: there are as many different tastes as collectors. On the contrary, M. Libri has no exclusive or narrow-minded tastes. It is not the wisdom to be found in a book that guides him; wisdom is a virtue which finds no home among bibliomaniacs; it is simply the strongest passion for the rare and the beautiful of every kind which rules him. He will have the Aldine classics, but they must be on vellum; and the Elzevirs, but on blue paper; and Dante, but it must be in manuscript. During the last twenty years the virtuosos have opened no new track into which M. Libri has not thrown himself, and passed by all his competitors. Manuscripts, Princep's editions of the Greek and Latin Classics, old French poets, Italian literature, early theatrical essays, first editions of our great authors—he would have everything, and nothing can escape his hand.

One example will suffice. We all know what interest has lately been felt in the romances of chivalry, Arthur and the Round Table, the Danish Sagas, Don Quixote and the Chivalry of Spain, forming, in fact, the epics of the middle ages. In the thirteenth century France produced a crowd of chivalric poets, whose works were translated into all European languages, and gave the tone to a new-born literature. Unfortunately these forgotten Homers were written in a language the grammar of which was unformed; the early printers, too, have only given us bad prose imitations of the despised or lost originals, so the first gothic copies are invaluable. The Prince of Essling has thrown himself into the pursuit, and made himself a name among collectors as the possessor of the finest copies of these old books. It is he who snatches from the poorer buyer romances which cannot be deciphered. M. Libri has lately turned his attention in this direction, and you have only to look at his last catalogue to see if he has succeeded to be complete the original edition of "Tiran le Blanc" alone is wanting, a phoenix which no one has ever seen; but M. Libri will find it some day, and on large folio paper.

This passion for the romances of chivalry has at least been of use to science: it has re-animated the taste for the middle ages, and is a help to the study of the history of civilization. We must call it the bright side of these epidemic manias: by shaking off the dust of the library shelves they bring to light buried treasures and forgotten ideas. If curiosity hunters would be the handmaids of learning, theirs would be a virtue: but alas! good luck turns their heads and bends the weakness of its worshippers to the most ridiculous fancies. In this respect M. Libri altogether distinguishes himself from ordinary amateurs. Strong as the fever may be which carries him away, he still remains a man of letters. Too often, when a jealous collector

has bought a unique or unknown volume for its weight in gold, he shuts it up under lock and key, never reads it, never shews it, and death only can separate him from it. For M. Libri the whole pleasure is in the discovery: once master of a precious book, he describes it, catalogues it, and sells it: he seems in a hurry to put this lost treasure into circulation, and calls all the world to enjoy it. Hence the value of his catalogues: they are no dry list of names but contain succinct notes, with unknown details as to the author, printer, and book; thus they take a place in the history of literature. And he does not only give the history of each edition, but of the very volume which he holds in his hand : copies of the same work are like men of the same generation, neither their lives nor their fortunes are the same; whilst the crowd disappears under the wave, a few rise above the foam, and their name triumphs over time. Large paper, vellum, beautiful bindings, represent nobility among books, whilst historical copies may stand for acquired worth. Here is the first edition of Athalie corrected by Racine's own hand; here a manuscript book of music, the only work known to have been in Oliver Cromwell's library; here the "office de la Vierge Marie," which Marguerite de Valois used. Must we call the possession of such books nothing but childish satisfaction and a pleasurable vanity? Is it not, on the contrary, a natural feeling which attaches to the remains of those we have loved or admired? If we preserve in our museums the sword of a hero, shall we look with less respect upon the volume he read the night before the battle? Do we not wish we had been one of that Genoese family, who possessed the Lilliputian gem of a manual of devotion, measuring but one inch-and-a-half in length by an inch-and-an-eighth in width, in a gold filagree binding with silver clasps, all studded with rose diamonds, the whole contained in a silk bag with rough gold exterior and strings and tassels of gold, and which was sold for about £35? A similar gem, in the eyes of the bibliomaniac, contained Petrarch's Sonnets: its length was one inch, and it contained fifty lines in a page which could only be read with the assistance of a glass: the illuminations were in a good Italian style painted in bistre. This singular bijou was cased in a binding of gold filagree, and might be worn as a book-ring. A matchless relic, too, was that sold some months ago from M. Felix Solar's library: "L'Office de la Semaine à l'usage de la Maison du Roy;" 1747, which Louis the Sixteenth carried with him to the Temple. An autograph of seven lives, signed "Louis Capet," is written on the cover, the prison stamp is likewise to be seen on it; and a scarlet silk-marker embroidered in gold by the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, in which she enclosed some of her hair, is attached to the volume.

To those who have never studied the subject of book-hunting it may not be uninteresting to give a slight sketch of the progress of printing and illustration, and shew that there is a real science in the subject we are treating of, and