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V.
recorded among the triumphant events of the year:* for the republic, though she may have slighted the opportunity of making herself mistress of the discovery, has ever since been tenacious of the glory of having given birth to the discoverer.
The tidings
were soon carried to England, which as yet was but a maritime power of inferior importance.
They caused, however, much
wonder in London, and great talk and admiration in the court of Henry V I I , where the discovery was pronounced “ a thing more divine than human."
W e have this on the authority of Sebastian
Cabot himself, the future discoverer of the northern continent of America, who was in London at the time, and was inspired by the event with a generous spirit of emulation.† Every member of civilized society, in fact, rejoiced in the occurrence, as one in which he was more or less interested.
To
some it opened a new and unbounded field of inquiry; to others, of enterprise; and every one awaited with intense eagerness the further development of this unknown world, still covered with mystery, the partial glimpses of which were so full of wonder. W e have a brief testimony of the emotions of the learned in a letter, written at the time, by Peter Martyr to his friend Pomponius Laetus. “ You tell me, my amiable Pomponius," he writes, “ that you leaped for joy, and that your delight was mingled with tears, when you read my epistle, certifying to you the hitherto hidden world of the antipodes.
You have felt and acted as
became a man eminent for learning, for I can conceive no ali ment more delicious than such tidings to a cultivated and ingenu ous mind.
I feel a wonderful exultation of spirits when I con* Foglieta, Istoria de Genova, lib. ii. † Hackluyt, Collect. Voyages, vol. iii. p. 7.