Page:The life of Christopher Columbus.djvu/44

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Thus, from the first days of the nineteenth century to more than its first half, an ascending series of publications, more and more brought together in proportion as we are removed from the epoch of the Discovery, shows the progressive interest that is attached to the memory of Columbus. This constant succession of labors and of testimonials on the same subject, a constancy of which our age does not offer a second example, sufficiently shows how far research is from having exhausted this magnificent theme of history.

But this persistence of public interest reveals an unsatisfied desire, and indicates a new expectation. There is reason for wishing for new details, for new elucidations. The instinct of people is not deceived. Now, we declare loudly that after all these homages of the arts, these labors of the learned, and these assertions of historians, Christopher Columbus is worse known in our days than he was a century ago. At that time people were at least ignorant of him, and did not pretend to have known him thoroughly. The incertitude of opinion was notorious; and persons knew they did not know him, or that they had of him only a wrong knowledge, which is often the worst kind of knowledge. At present, everybody has the pretension, apparently well founded, of knowing and judging of Columbus. Opinion is formed on the appreciation of writers whose accredited names countenance the error of the common herd. Only one voice has been heard, that of a learned and ambitious coterie, which has gained possession of the history of Columbus, and made personal property of his memory.

The time for his historic Rehabilitation is come at last. We shall tell the whole truth about him.

The coterie alluded to is composed solely of four writers. Of the four, only one has written the life of Columbus in the regular form of history; two have written only