Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1892-06-04
THE FAME oE COLUMBUS.
His Great Voyage the Outcome of Several
Inventions.

Inventions.
attribute the historical good fortune |
Of this portentious hero TO his martyr.
dom; or, in other words, to the virtue
and efficacy involved in the nature OF
suffering. That persistent struggle of
the discoverer with superstition, prior
to his wonderful success, and that other
struggle, after his wonderful success;
with his own errors and with ingrati-
tude, encircled his brow with crown
of thorns, of which every barb that
pierced his temples while he lived be-
came at his death shining ray of glory.
At the foot of every altar lies sacrifice.
The fabulous aspects of his career be-
came almost incredible. Beholding how
Columbus stored his mind with all the
gathered knowledge of the day; how he
urged before universities and learned
men the indispensable adoption of his
plans, based in part on his personal con-
lectures and in part on his experience
and his researches; how in all that time
of steadfast preparation he staked his
hopes upon magnates, archbishops,
monks, and potent queens and kings;
how learning and calculation entered
into his plans as much as in
tuition and genius, many pious souls
professed to discover therein revela-
tions such as God made of old to His
prophets, and proposed to the Church
his canonization. / attribute such ex-
ceptional treatment of Columbus to the
fact that discoveries and discoverers ex-
ert a potent influence upon the imagin-
alton; and yet they hold lesser place
in popular history than statesmen or
warriors. How much more important
would it be in our day to know who in
vented the -four mill than to know who
won the battle of Arbelal The fact is
that, comparing the volumes devoted to
| statecraft and to war with those treat
| ing of labor and industry, one is as
founded and dismayed at the Incredible
| disproportion. j can understand why
this should have been so in ages when
manual toll was considered degrading,
and when trade, relegated to the com
mon sort who were politically debarred
| from coping with the patrician classes.
was despised. But even in our day,
transcendently the age of labor and in
dustry, while the names of great COM
manders are borne on the worldwide
wings of fame, those of discovtrers fall
with the utmost ease into ungrateful
oblivion. For one Galvani, one Frank
lin, one Daguerre, one Edison, who has
spread his renown among all classes
and stamped an invention forever with
his name, what a vast number of unre-
membered or unknown glories!
The peoples of the future will not be
so ungrateful. The first years of this
century will grow in universal remem-
brance, not by reason of those Napole-
onic victories whose god-like renown a
thousand poems sing, bnt rather be.
cause of another and better title to
glory-the voltaic pile, imprisoning the
all-diffused electric fluid, and by its
chemicals and metals engendering cur
rents and forces as though it We're g
microcosmic universe, an epitome of the
alchemy whereby the great powers OF
nature produce and maintain life. With
out the astrolabe, invented by the Arat
schools of Cordova and Seville for the
study of the heavens; without the
science of algebra, so greatly facilitat
ing the labor of calculation; without
the mariners compass, which fixes {
sure point to guide the bark lost in the
infinitude of sky and sea; without tn,
printing-press, which within shor
half-century after its invention had al
ready become potent auxiliary to tn,
development of the human intellect
the discovery of the new world-itsel
the logic result of slow but sure evo
luton. wrought out in successive stage
like all great human achievements, ant
not by sudden chance-could neve
have taken place.-Emilo CASTELAR,, il
Century.