cannot concoct its food, while he draws away its vital heat to the brain; and for his senses,' if not his life's sake, we would have him, on some leisure day (if he will mind neither Madden nor Ficinus), sit down, and translate into all the languages of which he is master, be they as many as the four-and-twenty of Mithridates, Æsop's fable of The Members and the Belly.' That labour over, he will probably get impressed upon his mind the most salutary caution his best friends would wish him to receive. LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452—1520), natural son of a notary of Florence, was born at Da Vinci. Displaying an extraordinary taste for design at an early age, he was placed under Verrochio, an eminent artist, and soon excelled him in painting; and Ludovico Sforza, struck with admiration on seeing one of his works, invited him to Milan 1489, and settled on him an annual stipend. Here he displayed the universality of his genius by composing music, writing poetry, and by his engineering skill; and here he painted his celebrated Last Supper, which being executed on a wall of the Dominican convent of St. Marca, was soon destroyed by damp, but not before it had been copied by order of Francis I. On his return to Florence, 1508, he was employed by the senate to paint the council chamber, in conjunction with Michael Angelo, then a much younger man; and his admired cartoon of Piccinino's battle of cavalry, was a product of the emulation of these artists. Leonardo visited Rome when Leo X. was pope; but the pontiff being dissatisfied at his slow progress in painting, and the rivalship of Michael Angelo offending him, he was glad to accept the invitation of Francis I. to reside in France. Being an old man, and somewhat feeble when he began his journey, he was overcome by fatigue on reaching Fontainbleau, and confined to his bed by a languishing distemper. The king went frequently to see him dur ing his illness; and one day, as the artist was raising himself on his couch to thank him for the honour done him, he was seized with a fainting fit, and died in the arms of Francis, who had stepped forward to support him. This occurred 1520, Leonardo being 68. Da Vinci is regarded as the first correct painter of modern times. Chiaroscuro may be called his invention; and though his solicitude to be correct made him slow, and his colours soon faded, through his fondness for chemical experiments, he founded a style, particularly for the delineation of male heads, which enabled Rafaelle and Michael Angelo subsequently to gain immortal fame. Re CRISTOVAL COLUMBUS (14421506), properly Colon, was born of poor Genoese parents: and, after early serving as a common sailor in merchant ships, entered among the corsairs. The blowing up of the piratical vessel to which he belonged induced him to join his brother, who was settled at Lisbon; and there he is said to have been suddenly seized with a desire to find if there were countries far westward in the Atlantic, on hearing some mariners, who had been wrecked 1400 miles west of Cape St. Vincent, tell how they had found land, with canes growing thereon large enough to hold two gallons of water between each joint. turning to Genoa, he in vain implored that republic to aid his designs; and was in a similar way refused aid by the kings of Portugal and England. Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, however, entered into his views; and, with the promise that he should be viceroy of all the countries he might add to Spain, and receive a tenth of all profits derived, did the enterprising Colon set forth, Aug. 2, 1492, on that portentous expedition which gave us a new world, and immortalized his own name. In crossing the Atlantic, the variation of the compass was first observed, a phenomenon which filled the sailors with strange apprehensions; and had not the Bahama isle, St. Salvador, ap peared soon after, their fears would have compelled Colon to return home. He now ventured to explore other West India islands, including Hispaniola, where he built a fort, and left a few Spaniards; and returning homewards, arrived in safety at Lisbon, where the news of his discoveries excited the chagrin of the king, at having rejected his proferred services. At Barcelona, Colon was received by Ferdinand and Isabella with public honours; and the value and importance of his discoveries appear to have been duly appreciated. The gold, the pearls, and other valuable productions which he brought from the New World, having procured him numerous followers, he engaged in a second expedition, shortly after the termination of the former. In this voyage he made additional discoveries; but it was during a third, commenced in 1498, that he first saw the main land of America; so that he was preceded by Sebastian Cabot, and Americus Vesputius, who departed from Europe in 1497, and visited the American continent just before him. The latter of these rivals, too, has superseded him in the honour of giving a name to the New World. The ingratitude of the Spanish court rendered the last voyage peculiarly unfortunate to Colon. Having assumed the command of the settlement at Hispaniola, he remained there till Bovadilla, a Spanish officer, arrived to take the government; and this man not only arrested Colon, but put him in chains, and sent him prisoner to Spain. He was however soon released, and subsequently undertook a voyage to find a passage to the East Indies by sailing westward; but in this he did not succeed, and returning to Spain, he died at Valladolid, aged 64, 1506. His remains, by the king's command, were magnificently interred in the cathedral of Seville, and this inscription placed upon his tomb: A Castillo y a Leon Nuevo Mundo dio Colon.' AFFONSO D'ALBUQUERQUE (1452 1515), was born at Melinda in Africa, of noble parents, descended from a bastard branch of the royal house of Portugal. He was, at the age of 12, page to Affonso V., and then chief esquire to John II.; and in 1503, he conducted a fleet to India, in conjunction with his uncle Francesco, and secured the king of Cochin on his throne, which had been endangered by his powerful neighbour, the zamorin of Calicut. In gratitude for their services, the Albuquerques obtained leave to build a second fort at Cochin, Gama having had leave to construct one in the previous year; and though Francesco was wrecked on his voyage home, Affonso reached Lisbon in safety, 1504. The king sent him out to India again, 1506, in command of a squadron of five ships, composing part of a fleet of 16, under the orders of Tristan da Cunha; and after a great display of jealousy on the part of the Portuguese officials, he was acknowledged commander-inchief in India. Goa was now attacked by him and taken, 1510: but the ruler of the place, Idalcan, a Moor, by secretly effecting a revolt of his subjects, shut up the conqueror in the citadel; and Albuquerque was glad to escape on the first opportunity to his ships. He, however, returned, and carried the place by storm; and Goa was henceforward one of the most important Portuguese stations in the East. Malacca next fell to his arms, and the town being given up to plunder, one-fifth of the booty alone, which was set apart for the king, was valued at 200,000 gold cruzadoes. Albuquerque hereupon built a citadel at Malacca, coined money, established a new system of law and police, and reached Goa again in time to put down an insurrection organized in his absence by Idalcan. His efforts in 1513 against Aden, on the Red Sea, were wholly unsuccessful; and he returned to Goa, now the Portuguese capital, to devise plans for an attack upon Ormuz. That place yielded to him, 1515; and it remained in possession of the Portuguese until taken from them by the English and Shah Abbas 1622. Soon after this success, Albuquerque became ill, and was on his return to Goa, when met by a vessel bringing despatches from Portugal; and on learning that Don Lopez Soarez, whom he had sent prisoner to Europe for some act of insubordination, was to be his successor, his proud spirit sank, and he exclaimed in anguish, To the grave, miserable old man! to the grave-it is time!' and on the ensuing day died, aged 63, December 16, 1515. His body was conveyed to Goa, and buried in the church of Our Lady, which he had built; and in future years-a touching testimony to the uprightness of his government-Moors and Indians repaired to his tomb, as to that of a father, to implore redress from the injustice and tyranny of his successors. His bones, more than 50 years after his death, were transported to Portugal. As a mere conqueror, Albuquerque was doubtless the unprovoked enslaver of nations; he was also too jealous of the men of talent about him to do them justice; and he was perhaps retributively visited in the end in the way he had visited others. But his government had no ground for its harsh treatment of him; and his fate and that of too many other great men must be allowed to prove that gratitude is not the virtue of princes. VASCO DI ĜAMA was born at Sines in Portugal, and (in what capacity is not known) lived in the palace of king Emanuel, who appointed him to the command of an expedition, which was to seek its way to the Indian Ocean by sailing round the Cape of Good Hope, then recently discovered by Diaz. Vasco accordingly sailed from Lisbon 1497, with three small vessels and 60 men in all; and having doubled the Cape amid violent tempests, greatly to the consternation of his crews, arrived (by the aid of a pilot, who came on board at Melinda in Africa,) at Calicut, on the coast of Malabar, then a place of great trade, and in the hands of an Arab tribe, May 1498. Though dissuaded by his officers from going ashore, Vasco armed 12 of his bravest men, and on landing with them, was received with great pomp and ceremony by the natives; who conducted him through the town to a house in the country, where, on the following day, their zamorin, or chief, granted him an audience. As he had come without any important presents to offer, the zamorin looked but coldly on the adventurer; and he was thought happy in returning with his men uninjured to the ships. After repairing his vessels at the Angedive Isles, he again stood across the Indian Ocean, and reached Lisbon, after an absence of 26 months, Sept. 1499. He was advanced to the rank of high admiral by the king, and this his first voyage has ever been regarded as a great epoch in commercial history. It showed the nations of the West the sea-road to the remote East; it diverted the trade of the East from the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Italy, the routes in which it had run for 1400 years; and it led ultimately to the establishment in India of a vast empire of European merchants. Soon after Gama's return, Emanuel sent out a second fleet to India, under the command of Pedro Alvares de Cabral, who established a factory at Calicut-the first humble settlement made by the Europeans in that part of the world. Cabral had scarcely departed for home, when all the Portuguese he had left behind were massacred; and the government now resolving to employ force, Gama set sail with 10 vessels, and on again arriving at Calicut, seized the ships in that port. The zamorin hereupon condescended to treat; but Vasco would listen to no terms, unless a full and sanguinary satisfaction were given for the murder of his countrymen. Having waited three days without receiving a reply, he hanged at his yard-arm 50 Malabar sailors, his prisoners; on the next day cannonaded and destroyed the greater part of the town; and leaving three ships to blockade the port, coming again on earth to be monarch of Florence! He was strangled for heresy, and then burned, 1498. Giovanni Pico di Mirandola, son of the prince of Mirandola in Italy, lost his dominions for a time, and was eventually murdered by his nephew Galeotti, in his castle of Mirandola, together with his son, 1533. He is much celebrated as an Italian writer on theology, morals, the Scriptures, and science. Alchabiti, a Venetian, and writer on astrology and optics, died 1498. Isaac Abrabanel, a Portuguese rabbi, who affected to trace his descent from king David. He wrote a valuable commentary on the Old Testament, and died in exile at Venice, 1508, aged 71. He was buried at Padua with great pomp, many Christian nobles being among his mourners. Baptista Mantuan, a Latin poet of Italy, became general of the Carmelites. His chief works are eclogues called the Seven Virgins, beginning with the Virgin Mary, and Sylvæ; and they were once regarded as equal to the verses of the original Mantuan poet. He died 1516. Gior sailed with the rest to Cochin, the adjoining state to Calicut. These neighbours being old enemies, it was easy for Gama to make a treaty with the king of Cochin, whom he promised to assist in his wars; and he was allowed to establish a factory in Cochin, 1502, which being followed by a permission granted next year to the Albuquerques to build a second, the port and sea-coast were seized by the settlers, and Cochin became the cradle of the Portuguese power in India. Vasco, on reaching Lisbon, Dec. 1503, was created a peer, and handsomely pensioned by Emanuel; and in 1524, eight years after the death of the great Albuquerque, he was, after a retirement of 20 years, appointed viceroy of Portuguese India, being the first to hold that high title. His death, however, occurred instantly upon his arrival at Cochin to take office, 1525. De Gama ranks below Albuquerque as a hero; nevertheless his fame has been raised far above that of the latter by Camoens, who, in his Lusiad, has described the adventures of his first voyage with all that romance, hyper-gione, an illustrious painter of Vebole, and spirit, for which his muse is distinguished. nice, who surpassed Titian, his rival, in greatness of conception, as much CONTEMPORARIES.-Andrea Verro- as he was surpassed by Titian in the chio, a painter, goldsmith, and sculptor delicacies of natural objects. Titian of Florence, the first who made casts of had worked under him, but had been eminent persons, died 1488. George dismissed by him for imitating his Ripley, an Englishman, and Latin style. He introduced the fashion of poetical writer on alchymy, died a painting the house-fronts of Venice Carmelite monk, 1490. Angelo Po- in fresco; and gave a proof, by his litiano, an elegant Italian and Latin acquaintance with chiaroscuro, of the historian and poet, preceptor to the equal claim to power of painting with children of Lorenzo the Magnificent, sculpture, representing all the sides was born in Tuscany, and died 1495. of the body in the same picture, by Annius of Viterbo (rightly Giovanni the aid of reflection from a fountain Nanni), an Italian Dominican of at his feet, from a looking-glass at his great talent, known for imposing on side, and a shining armour. He died the world, as fragments of lost au- of the plague 1511, aged 32. John thors, compositions of his own. He Lascaris, descended of the eastern greatly offended his order by the imperial family, became celebrated at cheat, and died 1502, aged 70. Je- Florence as a writer; and was sent rome Savonarola, a fanatical prior of by Lorenzo de Medici into Greece Florence, who at one time declaimed and Turkey, where, by the sultan's against the rule of the Medici, and, permission, he gained access to all after the expulsion of Pietro of that the libraries, and thus greatly enhouse, announced that our Lord was riched Italy on his return. He re stored the use of the Greek capital 1501, Alexander, 1506, Sigismund letters, and died aged 90, 1535. Di- I. RUSSIA.-1462, Ivan III. (the mitri Chalcondiles, a Greek of Athens, Great); 1505, Vasili IV. NAVARRE. fled to Italy on the fall of the Eastern-1483, Catherine and John d'AlEmpire, and under Lorenzo de Me- bret. GRANADA. 1484, Boabdil; dici, taught Greek with great credit. added to Spain 1492. MODern PerHe died at Milan, under the like pa- SIAN EMPIRE.-1502, Ismail I. (the founder). tronage of Luigi Sforza, 1511. DELHI. 1450, Bhelol SOVEREIGNS.-TURKEY.-1481, Lodi, 1488, Sekandar. NAPLES. - 1458, Ferdinand I.; 1494, Alfonso II.; 1495, Ferdinand II.; 1496, Frederigo III.; 1501, Ferdinand V. (the Catholic,) and Francis I. of France; 1503, Ferdinand V., alone; from which time Naples and Sicily formed one state, and were appended to the Spanish monarchy till 1759. HUNGARY.-1458, Matthias I. (Corvinus); 1490, Ladislaus VI. BOHEMIA.-1471, Ladislaus II. EGYPT.— Under the Borgite Mamluk sol Bayezid II. POPES. 1484, Inno- REIGN CLX. HENRY VIII., KING OF ENGLAND. 1509 TO 1547-38 YEARS. PERSONAL HISTORY.-Henry VIII., the youngest son of Henry VII. and his queen Elizabeth, was born at Greenwich 1491, in the palace built by Edward I., to which Humphrey, the good duke of Gloucester, added a park and substantial walls. He was of a good figure, and commanding aspect, remarkably fair, and with a beard so like gold in hue, that an Italian ambassador thought it gilded. That diplomatist (Giustiniani) says that at the age of 29, he took great delight in bowling; and he observes it is the pleasantest sight in the world to see him engaged in this exercise, with his fair skin covered with a beautifully fine shirt.' He excelled in all the exercises of youth; but though educated with far greater care than his predecessors, was deficient in the grace and urbanity that usually result from early cultivation of mind. In his general character he displayed impetuosity, arrogance, and pedantry, delighted in pomp and pageantry, and at length gratified his passions at the expense of justice and humanity. From the abject compliance of his court, he acquired almost despotic authority over both peers and people; and became at length so cruel as to make bloodshed his pastime. He married six wives; 1. Catherine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and widow of his brother Arthur, whom he divorced, and by whom he had Henry, who died young, and Mary I.; 2. Anne, daughter of Thomas Boleyn, earl of Wiltshire, whom he beheaded, and by whom he had queen Elizabeth; 3. Jane Seymour, sister of Somerset, the protector, by whom he had Edward VI., and who died after the birth of her son; 4. Anne, daughter of John, duke of Cleve, whom he divorced; 5. Catherine, granddaughter of John Howard duke of Norfolk, whom he beheaded; and 6. Catherine, |