appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life. Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day's demonstration. Let the national flag float over every school-house in the country, and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship. In the churches and in the other places of assembly of the people, let there be expressions of gratitude to Divine Providence for the devout faith of the discoverer, and for the Divine care and guidance which has directed our history and so abundantly blessed our people. IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this 21st day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-two, and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and seventeenth. By the President. BENJAMIN HARRISON. JOHN W. FOSTER, Secretary of State. THE ADMIRATION OF A CAREFUL CRITIC. HENRY HARRISSE, a celebrated Columbian critic, in his erudite and valuable work, Columbus and the Bank of St. George." Nor must you believe that I am inclined to lessen the merits of the great Genoese or fail to admire him. But my admiration is the result of reflection, and not a blind hero PORTRAIT OF COLUMBUS, BY SIR ANTONIO MORO. Used by Washington Irving to illustrate his "Life of Columbus "' From the original in the possession of Mr. C. F. Gunther of Chicago. (See pages 52 and 113.) UN worship. Columbus removed out of the range of mere speculation the idea that beyond the Atlantic Ocean lands existed and could be reached by sea, made of the notion a fixed fact, and linked forever the two worlds. That event, which is unquestionably the greatest of modern times, secures to Columbus a place in the pantheon dedicated to the worthies whose courageous deeds mankind will always admire. But our gratitude must not carry us beyond the limits of an equitable appreciation. Indiscriminate praise works. mischief and injustice. When tender souls represent Columbus as being constantly the laughing-stock of all, and leading a life of misery and abandonment in Spain, they do injustice to Deza, to Cabrera, to Quintanilla, to Mendoza, to Beatrice de Bobadilla, to Medina-Celi, to Ferdinand and Isabella, and probably a host of others who upheld him as much as they could from the start. When blind admirers imagine that the belief in the existence of transatlantic countries rushed out of Columbus' cogitations, complete, unaided, and alone, just as Minerva sprang in full armor from the head of Jupiter, they disregard the efforts of numerous thinkers who, from Aristotle and Roger Bacon to Toscanelli, evolved and matured the thought, until Columbus came to realize it. When dramatists, poets, and romancers expatiate upon the supposed spontaneous or independent character of the discovery of America, and ascribe the achievement exclusively to the genius of a single man, they adopt a theory which is discouraging and untrue. No man is, or ever was, ahead of his times. No human efforts are, or ever were, disconnected from a long chain of previous exertions; and this applies to all the walks of life. When a great event occurs, in science as in history, the hero who seems to have caused it is only the embodiment and resulting force of the meditations, trials, and endeav 11 ors of numberless generations of fellow-workers, conscious and unconscious, known and unknown. When this solemn truth shall have been duly instilled into the minds of men, we will no longer see them live in the constant expectation of Messiahs and providential beings destined to accomplish, as by a sort of miracle, the infinite and irresistible work of civilization. They will rely exclusively upon the concentrated efforts of the whole race, and cherish the encouraging thought that, however imperceptible and insignificant their individual contributions may seem to be, these form a part of the whole, and finally redound to the happiness and progress of mankind. THE CARE OF THE NEW WORLD. DAVID HARTLEY, a celebrated English physician and philosopher. Born at Armley, near Leeds, 1705; died, 1757. Those who have the first care of this New World will probably give it such directions and inherent influences as may guide and control its course and revolutions for ages to come. THE TRIBUTE OF HEINRICH HEINE. HEINRICH HEINE. Born December 12, 1799, in the Bolkerstrasse at Dusseldorf; died in Paris, February 17, 1856. Mancher hat schon viel gegeben, Aber jener hat der Welt Eine ganze Welt geschenkt Nicht befreien könnt'er uns (Translation.) Some have given much already, |