probably Labrador. In Greenland some unimportant settlements were made, and the communication with the transatlantic continent was maintained until the beginning of the 15th century, when the fate of these colonies was covered as with a cloud; and although various attempts have since been made for their discovery, no traces of their existence have been obtained. In Southern Europe these expeditions were entirely unknown, and therefore the undiminished glory was left to Columbus of proving the existence of the Western World. This celebrated navigator was of Genoese origin; though his character had been formed and his skill acquired in the service of Portugal. His active mind readily foresaw the length and difficulties of a voyage to the Indies by sailing to the eastward, even if the route should be discovered; and it appeared to him that by sailing directly west he would more readily attain his object. Many circumstances, the importance of which is best known to mariners, supported his theories; but those to whom he applied for protection and support did not acknowledge their force. The Genoese senate regarded him as a madman; in Portugal his confidence was most treacherously abused; and in England his brother Bartholomew obtained the consent of Henry VII. only when too late. After many obstacles, arising from the ignorance and religious scruples of those to whom his project was submitted, Columbus sailed with three small vessels from Palos in Andalusia, 3d August, 1492. On the night of the 11th October, land was seen after a tedious voyage, during which the commander had to contend against the cowardly and rebellious spirit of his crew. San Salvador or Guanahani, one of the Bahama chain stretching between Florida and St. Domingo, was the island first discovered. Cuba and Hayti were reached soon after. Columbus, now directing his course homeward, returned to the harbour of Palos, seven months and eleven days after his departure. He was received with great kindness by Ferdinand and Isabella, who ennobled his family, and ratified all the privileges of the treaty of Santa Fé.*

While Europe was still re-echoing with the news of this voyage, the navigator had again sailed towards the west with seventeen vessels, having on board numerous settlers eager to reap the golden harvest which the descriptions of travellers had placed in the Indies. Isabella in the island of Ĉuba was the first city founded in the New World. In his third voyage, 1498, Columbus reached the continent of America, near the mouth of the Orinoco. It does not fall within the scope of this work to do more than notice the leading points of transatlantic discovery; the history of the early settlers will be found in volumes especially devoted to that purpose. It will here suffice to say, that Columbus died in 1506, after being treated by the Spanish court with the greatest ingratitude. His body was pompously interred in the cathedral of Seville; and over it was erected a monument, with the simple inscription that Columbus had given a new world to Castile and Leon. His remains were afterwards transported to the island of Hayti, and buried in the cathedral of St. Domingo in 1536, whence, two hundred and sixty years afterwards, they were transferred to Havana.

*By the articles of this treaty, drawn up before Columbus sailed, he was created highadmiral, with hereditary right in the seas he should discover; viceroy also, with heredi. tary possession of the lands; he was to receive a tithe of the profits of commercial undertakings; and be supreme judge in all mercantile disputes in the newly-discovered countries.

In 1499, Alonzo de Ojeda sailed to the new continent, accompanied by a Florentine merchant named Amerigo Vespucci, under whose direction the enterprise was chiefly conducted. Returning to Europe, he published an account of his adventures, and claimed the honour of being the first to discover the mainland of the new world.* In 1500, the mouth of the great river Amazon was entered; while the Portuguese had already landed in Brazil.

Consult: Robertson's History of America; Irving's Life of Columbus.

THE CHURCH.

COUNCILS OF CONSTANCE AND BASLE, 1414 AND 1431.-Several attempts were made to terminate the great schism in the Catholic church; and for that purpose, in the double pontificate of Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII., a council was held at Pisa in 1409, whose election of Alexander V. added a third pope to the two who disputed the possession of the tiara. It was not until the council of Constance deposed all the three, and elected Martin V. in their stead, followed, in 1429, by the resignation of Clement VIII., that these divisions in the church were entirely extinguished. Martin, in contempt of his promises, published only seven unimportant decrees, by which he pretended to satisfy the complaints and demands of the council. In 1418, he dissolved it, and named Pavia for the next place of meeting, but the assembly was eventually held at Basle under Eugenius IV. Independently of the correction of abuses, this body had to deliberate on a reunion with the Greek church and other schismatic communions. The first object was attained by decreeing the abolition of "annates, reserves, and expectatives." The pope, alarmed at these bold measures, wished to dissolve the council; but the members asserting their supremacy by force, accused Eugenius of heresy, and deposed him. The reforms effected at Constance and Basle had not all the happy results that were expected; nevertheless, they were adopted in France by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, 1438; and the diet of Aschaffenburg accepted the German concordat, drawn up in terms exceedingly favourable to the holy see, 1448. The Emperor Frederick III., who desired to be crowned in the Roman capital, withheld no sacrifice; and his coronation in 1452 was accompanied by a total renunciation of the rights of the empire over that ancient city. Since this period, the authority of the popes has been supreme in Rome; and the conspiracy of the tribune Porcari in 1453 was the last struggle for republican liberty.

The chief resolutions of the assembly at Basle were those of the fourth and fifth sessions: one declaring the supremacy of general councils, as having received by divine right an authority to which every rank, even the papal, must submit in matters of faith, and in the reformation of the church; the other declares liable to punishment every person, not excepting the pope himself, that shall refuse to obey any council lawfully assembled. These decrees, the great boast of the moderate papists, are not of direct practical importance; but they served to check the usurpations of the see of Rome, by the acknowledgment

* The imposture of Vespucci has long been known, and his dishonest narrative has in no degree injured the glory of Columbus. As to the honour of first reaching the shores of the new continent, it probably belongs to the English mariners, who, under Cabot, a Bristol seaman of Venetian parents, sailed along the coasts of North America from Gabrador to Florida, 1498.

of a superior authority. The same assembly further enacted that another general council should be held in five years; a second at the end of seven more; and at intervals of every ten years afterwards. Their proposition on the faith to be kept with heretics will be noticed below. This synod further took away the cup from the laity, ordering that "the Lord's supper should be received by them only in one kind, i. e. the bread."

HUSSITES. Since the cruel extirpation of the Albigenses, the pope and church, who assumed to be sole interpreters of Scripture, had reigned without obstacle; but the imprudent obstinacy of John XXII., in 1324, excited complaints and accusations against the holy see, which proved the forerunners of the Reformation. The Franciscans, whom the pope violently persecuted, furnished in thirty-four years no fewer than two thousand victims to the pontifical executioners. The publications describing the disorders of the court of Avignon were followed up in England with an effect still more fatal to the supremacy of Rome. John Wickliffe, by his translation of the New Testament into the English tongue, inflicted a severe blow on the authority of the clergy.* His doctrines spread rapidly beyond this country; and in the university of Prague arose the great predecessor of Luther. John Huss began by preaching against the disorderly lives of churchmen, and soon adopted the principles of Wickliffe, with which he became familiar, by means of the books his friend Jerome had brought from Oxford. Some time afterwards, Boniface IX. sent monks into Bohemia charged with the sale of indulgences: this scandalous traffic was forbidden by Sigismond; and Huss seized the opportunity of declaiming against the power of the pope to grant them. When the reformer's exertions in defence of the privileges of the university had promoted him to the rectorship, he spoke more freely, and even attacked the papal supremacy. Alexander V. interfered energetically to crush the rising heresy; but although in 1412 he excommunicated Huss and laid Prague under an interdict, the rector continued to disseminate his doctrines. For this conduct he was cited before the council of Constance, the states-general of Christendom, as it has been called, 1414. Under a safe-conduct from Sigismond, Huss reached the place of meeting, where he was soon thrown into prison, and detained half a year before his first interrogation, 5th June 1415. About a month afterwards, judgment was pronounced on a series of thirty-nine articles professed to be taken from his works, his books were condemned to be burnt, and himself given over to the secular power. He perished at the stake, protesting his orthodoxy to the last.† In 1416, his disciple,. Jerome of Prague, underwent a similar fate.

*The translation and reading of the Bible, after the Vulgate had ceased to be intelligible, was by no means interdicted, although the Legends of Saints were more admired The New Testament was rendered into German by two different parties in the ninth century, and detached books had been translated into French before the twelfth. When the spread of heretical opinions began to disturb the orthodox believer, it was thought necessary to provide against lawless interpretation; and, accordingly, the council of Toulouse, in 1229, prohibited the laity from possessing the Scriptures.

Hallam remarks, that" the scandalous breach of faith-the violation of the safe. conduct-which the council induced Sigismond to commit on that occasion, is notorious. But perhaps it is not equally so, that it recognised by a solemn decree the flagitious principle, that no faith or promise ought to be kept with Huss, by natural, divine, or human law, to the prejudice of the Catholic religion. No breach of faith, he continues, can be excused by our opinion of ill-desert in the party, or by a narrow interpretation of our own engagements. Every capitulation ought to be construed favourably for the weaker side."

The news of these executions excited general indignation throughout Bohemia, where the doctrine of communion in both kinds and evangelical self-denial had made great progress. All the churches of Prague re-echoed the panegyrics of Huss; medals were struck in his honour; and at length a solemn festival was appointed to commemorate his martyrdom. Angry feelings both against Germans and Romans now announced a speedy outbreak; and in John of Trocznow, surnamed Zisca, was found a leader in the war against the church. His partisans soon amounted to the number of 40,000; and to provide a stronghold for them, he caused lines to be drawn around the summit of a mountain, which he called Tabor- the Bohemian word for a camp or tentwhence his followers derived their appellation of Taborites. The Hussites gave full scope to their fury, so that they destroyed 550 monasteries before the end of the year. This violence brought Sigismond into Moravia; and by means of the crusade then preached, he united 140,000 men under his banner. This numerous host was defeated by the Bohemians armed with iron flails, and nearly all the Moravian nobility perished on the field of battle. Zisca having died in 1424 of the plague, the Taborites separated into two bodies, which continued to devastate Bavaria, Misnia, and Lusatia. Their ravages were terminated by the concessions of the council of Basle.

COUNCIL OF FLORENCE, 1439.-Under Pope Eugenius IV. a council was held at Florence, whither it had been transferred from Ferrara, for the purpose of terminating the Greek schism. The Emperor John Palæologus, after a brief discussion, acceded to the Roman confession of faith, recognising especially the doctrines that the "Holy Ghost_proceedeth from the Father and the Son," and that the Bishop of Rome was the head of the universal church. The wound now seemed healed; but when the emperor returned to Constantinople, he met with such an opposition to the re-union of the two churches, that he dared not persevere. In the subsequent overthrow of the Greek kingdom, Pope Nicholas V. saw the judgment of an offended Deity. In 1492, the papal crown was disgraced by Alexander VI. (Roderic Borgia), whose profligate career, scarcely possible to be exaggerated, was ended by his drinking the poison he had mingled for another.

APPENDIX TO PART SECOND.

Commerce, the Progress of Learning, Discoveries, &c.

Commerce. The commerce of Western Europe was almost entirely interrupted between the fall of Rome and the accession of Charlemagne, at which latter period the cities of Italy began to form a connexion with the ports of the Greek empire. While Constantinople flourished, the treasures of the East were brought thither by caravans from India, through Candahar and Persia; by the northern routes along the Caspian and Euxine seas; by the Euphrates and thence overland to the Syrian ports; or lastly, by way of the Red Sea and Egypt. Amalfi, in the tenth century; Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, in the eleventh, became in turn the chief marts of foreign trade. The persecuted Jews were at this time active agents in the mercantile system; and by the decrees of the church against usury, the trade in money was, until the thirteenth

century, thrown almost entirely into their hands. The Crusades formed a grand epoch in the history of commerce, by the introduction of silk and sugar into the west of Europe. Five hundred years before, in 551, silk-worms had been brought from China into Greece, and were successfully reared in the Morea.

In the fourteenth century, the Genoese traded with India through the Black Sea; as did the Venetians through Egypt and Syria. The circumnavigation of Africa proved as fatal to the commerce of Venice as did the fall of Constantinople to her great rival. So long as the Mediterranean was the medium of commercial intercourse, Venice, situated nearly in the centre of the civilised world, possessed the whole trade of the East; and such were her resources derived from the traffic, that five millions of gold crowns were expended in opposing the memorable league of Cambray, 1508. The maritime communication opened by the Portuguese with India in 1497, deprived the republic of the wealth of the East; while the discovery of America directed the attention of Western Europe to a wider field of mercantile and naval enterprise. Another extraordinary event again changed the course of commerce: an inundation of the sea formed a connexion between the ocean and a lake since called the Zuyder Zee, and thus Amsterdam became a maritime port in the fifteenth century. The Hanseatic league, which, in 1241, facilitated the progress of the interior trade of Europe, began to decline from 1370.

The grand commercial route was the Rhine, the Danube, and the various passages of the Alps, particularly across the Tyrol and by the St. Gothard. The second line proceeded from Greece to Russia, passing by Vienna and Ratisbon. A third road extended from the coasts of the Mediterranean, by Marseilles, to the Atlantic. The merchandise brought by these channels was distributed at the several fairs of Aix-la-Chapelle, where all goods were exempt from toll, and of Champagne, where might be seen merchants from the most distant parts of the known world. Spain furnished arms, silk, and Cordovan leather; while Germany, in return for the wines of France and spices of the East, exported beer, cloth, and metals.

In England the charter of John, 1215, declared a uniformity of weights_and measures; and in 1331, Edward III. endeavoured to bring from the Low Countries a number of the discontented weavers. In the thirty-seventh year of his reign, it was enacted that every merchant or artificer worth £500 in goods and chattels might dress like a squire of £100 a-year, and so on in a rising scale. In 1348, Spanish horses of Arabian breed were exchanged for sheep; a barter which created new sources of wealth in both countries. Agriculture especially flourished in England; and it is to this triple combination of commerce, manufactures, and rural economy that she is indebted for her splendour and power.

Woollen Trade. -The introduction into England of the important manufacture of woollen cloth was the work of Edward III. Flanders had previously been the great centre of the trade, whence, by the institution of yearly fairs, 960, all continental Europe was supplied. English wool had long been exported to the Netherlands, but principally by German and Italian merchants. Henry I. had endeavoured to establish manufactures of fine wool in 1111, by a settlement of Flemings at Ross in Pembrokeshire. The abuses of monopoly, and the tumults to which they gave rise, drove many workmen from Holland and Flanders into this kingdom, 1331, where they obtained such privileges as encouraged them to resume their occupations. The serges of Ireland were much esteemed in Italy in the fourteenth century, before which period the woollen trade of Catalonia had been firmly established.

Fisheries.-The earliest authentic account of the herring-fishery on the coast of Norway extends as far back as to 978. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the Netherlands rivalled the Hanse Towns, not only in their woollen manufactures, but in their method of pickling herrings, a superiority which they attained about the time of the removal of the great shoal from the southern shores of the Baltic, first to those of Denmark and Norway, and, in 1394, to that of Britain.

Naval Code.-The first maritime code was that of Rhodes, which was revived