Columbus was the first European who set foot in the new world which he had discovered. He landed in a rich dress, and with a naked sword in his hand. His men followed, and kneeling down, they all kissed the ground which they had so long desired to see. They next erected a crucifix, and prostrating themselves before it, returned thanks to God for conducting their voyage to such an happy' issue. They then took solemn possession of the country for the crown of Castile and Leon, with all the formalities which the Portuguese were accustomed to observe in acts of this kind in their new discoveries.

The Spaniards, while thus employed, were surrounded by many of the natives, who gazed in silent admiration upon actions which they could not comprehend, and of which they did not foresee the consequences. The dress of the Spaniards, the whiteness of their skins, their beards, their arms, appeared strange and surprising. The vast machines2 in which they had traversed the ocean, that seemed to move upon the waters with wings, and uttered a dreadful sound, resembling thunder, accompanied with lightning and smoke, struck them with such terror, that they began to respect their new guests as a superior order of beings, and concluded that they were children of the sun who had descended to visit the earth.-ROBERTSON'S History of America.' 1. It is so in the original. Is there | instance, walk across the sea, but by anything to object to? means of a boat, ship, &c., we are able to do the same thing, and so the boat, ship, &c., may be called a "machine." On this subject some valuable remarks will be found in one of Knight's Weekly Volumes, "Capital and Labour," which ought to be in every school library.

2. Johnson defines this word as "any complicated work in which one part contributes to the motion of another"—a definition scarcely applicable to a ship, but the word is often used to signify anything that enables us to do what we could not do without it. We cannot, for

THE English colonies in Virginia, relying more on foreign supplies than on their own industry, supported with difficulty, for a few years, a frail and tottering existence. In 1609, a reinforcement of 500 settlers arrived in nine ships. Lord Delawarr was appointed governor of the colony; but as he was unable to proceed himself to the settlements in that year, he sent three deputy governors, who, being embarked in the same ship, were all cast away on the islands of Bermudas.

On those islands, which were at that time uninhabited, they

G

found abundance of wood and of provisions. The swine left there by the Spaniards had increased prodigiously, and proved for the future a grand resource to the needy colonists. The Bermudas were now taken possession of for the crown of England; and from Sir George Summers, one of the deputy-governors, they received the name of the Summers' Islands. The presence of so many men of rank and consideration maintained a semblance of order and of plenty among the profuse, negligent, and murmuring colonists.

But a society formed of such heterogeneous elements could not easily acquire stability; and when Lord Delawarr, shortly after, arrived in the Chesapeak Bay, to enter upon his office as governor, he found the settlers already embarked, and on the point of returning home. He compelled them, however, to relinquish that design, and to apply themselves assiduously to the improvement of their fortunes in the New World. This lucky accident saved the Virginian colonies from being again totally extinguished. In 1616 they commenced the cultivation of tobacco, from which they soon derived wealth and importance. Tobacco, when first brought into use in Europe, had much opposition to encounter and as bigotry is easily allied with prejudice, those who decried it from mere fantastical antipathy were its most zealous adversaries, and did not scruple even to allege the authority of religion on their side. King James openly avowed his aversion to "this vile and nauseous weed," from which the country has since derived so large a share of its revenue. There are few facts in history that so fully illustrate how little the authority of the sovereign avails against the general feeling of the commonalty, as the rapidity with which tobacco a luxury not very captivating in the first instancealthough denounced by some of the greatest princes in Europe, has grown into extensive circulation.-COOLEY'S' Maritime and Inland Discovery.'

OTHER wild or inefficient intrigues were carried on in behalf of Charles down to about 1760; but they have all the character of being formed by mere projectors, desirous of obtaining money from the exiled Prince, without any reasonable prospect, perhaps without any serious purpose, of rendering him effectual service.

A few years later than the period last mentioned, a person seems to have been desirous to obtain Charles's commission to form some interest for him among the North American colonists, who had then commenced their quarrels with the mother country. It was proposed by the adventurer alluded to, to make a party for the Prince among the insurgents in a country which contained many Highlanders. But that scheme was also entirely without solid foundation, for the Scottish colonists in general joined the party of King George.

Amidst these vain intrigues, excited by new hopes, which were always succeeded by fresh disappointment, Charles, who had supported so much real distress and fatigue with fortitude and firmness, gave way both in mind and body. His domestic uneasiness was increased by an unhappy union with Louisa of Stohlberg, a German princess, which produced happiness to neither party, and some discredit to both. Latterly, after long retaining the title of Prince of Wales, he laid it aside, because, after his father's death in 1766, the courts of Europe would not recognise him as King of Great Britain. He afterwards lived incognito under the title of Count d'Albany; finally, he died at Rome upon the 31st of January 1788, in his sixty-eighth year, and was royally interred in the cathedral church of Frescati, of which his brother was bishop.

The merits of this unhappy Prince appear to have consisted in a degree of dauntless resolution and enterprise, bordering upon temerity; the power of supporting fatigue and misfortunes, and extremity of every kind, with firmness and magnanimity; and a natural courtesy of manner highly gratifying to his followers, which he could exchange for reserve at his pleasure. Nor, when his campaign in Scotland is considered, can he be denied respectable talents in military affairs. Some of his partizans of higher rank conceived he evinced less gratitude for their services than he ought to have rendered them; but by far the greater part of those who approached his person were unable to mention him without tears of sorrow.

His faults or errors arose from a course of tuition totally unfit for the situation to which he conceived himself born. His education, intrusted to narrow-minded priests and soldiers of fortune, had been singularly limited and imperfect; so that instead of being taught to disown or greatly modify the tenets which had made his fathers exiles from their throne and country, he was instructed to cling to those errors as sacred maxims, to which he was bound in honour and conscience to adhere. He left a natural daughter, called Countess of Albany who died only a few years since.

The last direct male heir of the line of Stuart, on the death of Charles, was his younger brother, Henry Benedict, whom the Pope had created a cardinal. This Prince took no other step for asserting his claim to the British kingdoms, than by striking a beautiful medal in which he is represented in his cardinal's robes, with the crown, sceptre, and regalia, in the background, bearing the motto, "Voluntate dei non desiderio populi," implying a tacit relinquishment of the claims to which, by birth, he might have pretended. He was a Prince of a mild and beneficent character,

and generally beloved.

After the innovations of the French Revolution had destroyed, or greatly diminished, the revenues which he derived from the church, he subsisted, singular to tell, on an annuity of 4,000. a-year assigned to him by the generosity of the late King George the Third. In requital of this bounty, and as if acknowledging the House of Hanover to be the legitimate successors of his claim to the crown of Britain, this, the last of the Stuarts, bequeathed to His Majesty George IV. all the crown jewels, some of them of great value, which King James the Second had carried along with him on his retreat to the Continent in 1688, together with a mass of papers, tending to throw much light on British history. He died at Rome, June 1807, in the eighty-third year of his age.-SIR WALTER SCOTT.

BESIDES all these causes of Luther's rapid progress, arising from the nature of his enterprise, and the juncture at which he undertook it, he reaped advantage from some foreign and adventitious circumstances, the beneficial influence of which none of his forerunners in the same course had enjoyed. Among these may be reckoned, the invention of the art of printing, about half-a-century before his time. By this fortunate discovery, the facility of acquiring and of propagating knowledge was wonderfully increased, and Luther's books, which must otherwise have made their way slowly and with uncertainty into distant countries, spread at once all over Europe. Nor were they read only by the rich and the learned, who alone had access to books before that invention; they got into the hands of the people, who, upon this appeal to them as judges, ventured to examine and

to reject many doctrines which they had formerly been required to believe, without being taught to understand them.

The revival of learning at the same period was a circumstance extremely friendly to the Reformation. The study of the ancient Greek and Roman authors, by enlightening the human mind with liberal and sound knowledge, roused it from that profound lethargy in which it had been sunk during several centuries. Mankind seem, at that period, to have recovered the powers of inquiring and of thinking for themselves, faculties of which they had long lost the use; and fond of the acquisition, they exercised them with great boldness upon all subjects. They were not now afraid of entering an uncommon path, or of embracing a new opinion. Novelty appears rather to have been a recommendation of a doctrine; and instead of being startled when the daring hand of Luther drew aside or tore the veil which covered established errors, the genius of the age applauded and aided the attempt.

Luther, though a stranger to elegance in taste or composition zealously promoted the cultivation of ancient literature; and sensible of its being necessary to the right understanding of the Scriptures, he himself had acquired considerable knowledge both in the Hebrew and Greek tongues. Melancthon, and some other of his disciples, were eminent proficients in the polite arts; and as the same ignorant monks who opposed the introduction of learning into Germany, set themselves with equal fierceness against Luther's opinions, and declared the good reception of the latter to be the effect of the progress which the former had made, the cause of learning and of the Reformation came to be considered as closely connected with each other, and, in every country, had the same friends and the same enemies. This enabled the reformers to carry on the contest at first with great superiority.

Erudition, industry, accuracy of sentiment, purity of composition, even wit and raillery, were almost wholly on their side, and triumphed with ease over illiterate monks, whose rude arguments expressed in a perplexed and barbarous style, were found insufficient for the defence of a system, the errors of which all the art and ingenuity of its latter and more learned advocates had not been able to palliate. That bold spirit of inquiry, which the revival of learning excited in Europe, was so favourable to the Reformation, that Luther was aided in his progress, and mankind were prepared to embrace his doctrines by persons who did not wish success to his undertaking.

The greater part of the ingenious men who applied to the study of ancient literature towards the close of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, though they had