This long course of discovery has been almost entirely thrown into shade by the more daring and brilliant discovery of America, which we have now to enter upon.

Yet these proceedings on the African coast had in them all the energy, perseverance, and courage which distinguished American discovery.

Prince Henry himself was hardly a less personage than Columbus.

They had different elements to contend in.

But the man whom princely wealth and position, and the temptation to intrigue which there must have been in the then state of the Portuguese court, never induced to swerve from the one purpose which he maintained for forty years, unshaken by popular clamour, however sorely vexed he might be with inward doubts and misgivings; who passed laborious days and watchful nights in devotion to this one purpose, enduring the occasional short-comings of his agents with that forbearance which springs from a care for the enterprise in hand, so deep as to control private vexation (the very same motive which made Columbus bear so mildly with insult and contumely from his followers),--such a man is worthy to be put in comparison with the other great discoverer who worked out his enterprise through poverty, neglect, sore travail, and the vicissitudes of courts.