Mr. Washington Irving, placed in relation with the archivists of Madrid, and having at his disposal materials already prepared, wrote his History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. This work, welcomed with a lively interest, was circulated in a few years in all the nations of Europe.
In 1828, M. Ferdinand Denis, under the form of a historical romance, gave a lovely and poetic picture of the Discovery, in which the distinctive character of Columbus is seized with as much exactness as it is expressed with felicity. Ismaël ben Kaïssar[1] is the title of this composition, in which the richness of lively local colorings are happily allied with the truth of history. We have seen, later, a celebrated romancer of the United States, Fenimore Cooper, becoming occupied with this subject, wish to appropriate and transpose it into his own language,[2] but without succeeding in infusing into it that spontaneous effulgence, that charm of description, which is poetically faithful to the perfumes of intertropical nature, with which Fernando Denis had impregnated his work. Afterwards, a translation of Washington Irving's work, augmented with annotations, was published in Genoa. Some years later, Humboldt wrote comments on the discoveries of Columbus, in five volumes, under the title of A Critical Examination of the History and the Geography of the New Continent.
In 1843, our book, The Cross in the Two Worlds, came to reveal, for the first time, the providential mission confided to Columbus, and to affirm loudly the saintliness of his character. This work, come to its fourth edition, translated, as is well known, into Italian, on its first appearance taught people to consider, under his true character, the herald of the Cross.
The events of 1848, and the European commotion which was their consequence, did not for a long time turn the
