Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/269

243 HIS DEATH. 243 the great cause to which he had consecrated his chapter . „ . XVIII. life, to allow scope for the lower pursuits and pleas- '— ures, which engage ordinary men. Indeed, his imagination, by feeding too exclusively on this lofty theme, acquired an unnatural exaltation, which raised him too much above the sober realities of existence, leading him to spurn at difficulties, which in the end proved insurmountable, and to color the future with those rainbow tints, which too often melted into air. This exalted state of the imagination w^as the "isenthusi- O asm. result in part, no doubt, of the peculiar circumstan- ces of his life. For the glorious enterprise which he had achieved almost justified the conviction of his acting under the influence of some higher in- spiration than mere human reason, and led his de- vout mind to discern intimations respecting himself in the dark and mysterious annunciations of sacred prophecy. ^^ That the romantic coloring of his mind, how- ever, was natural to him, and not purely the growth of circumstances, is evident from the chimerical speculations, in which he seriously indulged before the accomplishment of his great discoveries. His scheme of a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre was most deliberately meditated, and strenuously avowed from the very first date of his proposals to the Spanish government. His enthu- siastic communications on the subject must have 18 See the extracts from Colum- torn, ii., Doc. Dipl. no. 140,) as still bus's book of Prophecies, (apud existing in the Bibliotheca Colom- Navarrete, Coleccion de Viages, bina at Seville.