tations and introductions; the last one has written neither memoir nor biography, — he has limited himself to a commentary, — but the authority of his European name has sanctioned the errors put forth by the three others, aggravating them with all the weight of his own errors.
These four writers, whose tacit and retrospective association has obtained the monopoly of the history of Columbus, and who denaturalize his person and his providential role, are, — the Genoese, Giambattista Spotorno; the American, Washington Irving; the Spanish academician, D. Martin Fernandez de Navarrete; and the illustrious Prussian, Alexander Humboldt.
Spotorno wrote by order of the decurional corps of Genoa; Navarrete, by order of the Court of Spain; Irving, to gain the literary crown which his preceding successes presaged; Humboldt, to mark with an everlasting seal his travels in the equinoctial regions.
Spotorno and Navarrete have only written dissertations, and laboriously collected materials, from which Messrs. Humboldt and Irving have composed, — the latter, his History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus; the former, his Critical Examination of the History and Geography of the New Continent. These four writers have deceived themselves, and deceived us. The official position of the two former, and the great notoriety of the two others, have invested their labors with imperious authority; and they have imposed their errors on our cotemporaries.
A strange circumstance! never until now has any European written the life of Columbus. A thing not less strange, no Catholic writer has hitherto given the complete biography of the messenger of the Cross in those new regions. As the justly celebrated Father Ventura de Raulica has remarked, whilst the history of Bossi counts scarcely forty-three pages, that of Washington Irving is composed of four volumes, 8vo, and the commentaries of Humboldt of five volumes, 8vo. Now, Irving and Humboldt, the only writers
