Page:The life of Christopher Columbus.djvu/43

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
INTRODUCTION.
19

attention of the public from a subject that always engrosses its attention without ever tiring it. Some of the American republics wished to honor the hero of the two worlds. Several cities awarded him monuments. In 1850, the government of Peru determined to honor him with a colossal statue in the great square of Lima, and confided its execution to the celebrated sculptor, Salvatore Revelli. In 1851, an eminent Ligurian, attached to the service of His Holiness, Monseigneur Stefano Rossi, published a remarkable work, entitled, "On the Exile of Christopher Columbus, a Genoese."[1]

In 1852, our illustrious friend Count Tullio Dandolot published at Milan his work, — The Ages of Dante and of Columbus, — in which he copied the part of our book, The Cross in the Two Worlds, which touched on the religious character of Columbus, and the whole of Italy praised the new work.

In 1853, the only descendant of the Counts Colombo de Cuccaro, Monseigneur Luigi Colombo, domestic prelate of His Holiness, composed a work on his immortal relative. In his book,[2] which was in press, at the time of our last sojourn in Rome, and the proof-sheets of which the virtuous prelate had the courtesy to communicate to us, the question of the birthplace is raised, but not exhausted definitively. The work, presenting an ensemble of appreciations on the extensive subject of relationship, rather than a real history of the discoveries of Christopher Columbus, contains, nevertheless, a cursory view of the services rendered to the world by the man who completed our knowledge of it.[3]

  1. Del discacciamento di Cristoforo Colombo, Genovese, in 8o.
  2. Patria e Biografia del grande ammiraglio D. Cristoforo Colombo, etc. Roma.
  3. Several other writers who have written biographies of Columbus are mentioned by M. De Lorgues. — B.