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But it is not easy to explain the continuance of that slow progress, which was even retarded during the years which elapsed between the demise of that prince of mariners in 1463, and that of Alphonso in 1481; when the increased experience of the Portuguese, in their frequent voyages to the new discovered Atlantic islands and African coast, ought to have inspired them with fresh vigour and extended views of discovery and commerce.

If 1800 c.c. be taken as normal instead of 1500 c.c. as some insist, these great periods since these "ape-men" existed must be enormously increased, in some cases 50%. If, on the other hand, the pithecanthropus really lived 750,000 years ago, what, with normal development, should have been its skull capacity, if life began 60,000,000 ago? Ans. 98.75%; or 1481 c.c.

In 1481 it was united to France, to which it has ever since been subject. In 1720 it was ravaged by the plague, which was memorable not only on account of its wide-wasting devastation, but also for the heroism of Xavier de Belzunce, Bishop of Marseilles, whose zeal and charity for the poor sufferers commands our respect and admiration. Pope, in his "Essay on Man," says

His solid and practical qualities were by this time beginning to be recognised even by Philippa's haughty family, and it was possibly through the interest of her uncle, Pedro Noronhas, a distinguished minister of the King of Portugal, that he got the command of a caravel in the expedition which set out for Guinea in December 1481.

According to Vasari, the Ugo tomb was considered to be Mino's finest achievement, and he deliberately made the Madonna and Child as like the types of his beloved Desiderio as he could. It was finished in 1481, and Mino died in 1484, from a chill following over-exertion in moving heavy stones.

A neat and smiling little house comes next, with blue and white posts and an inscription stating that it was once the home of the architect Pellegrino Orefice; then a little house with pretty windows, now an "antichita"; then the Rio di S. Marcuola; and after a small and ugly little house with a courtyard that might be made very attractive, we come to the rich crumbling red wall of the garden of the Palazzo Vendramin Calergi, which is notable as architecture, being one of the works of Pietro Lombardi, in 1481, and also as having once housed the noble Loredan family who produced more than one Doge.

In a few rare examples of the edition of 1481, the blank spaces, left at the beginning of every canto for the hand of the illuminator, have been filled, as far as the nineteenth canto of the Inferno, with impressions of engraved plates, seemingly by way of experiment, for in the copy in the Bodleian Library, one of the three impressions it contains has been printed upside down, and much awry, in the midst of the luxurious printed page.

The establishment of the Inquisition, therefore, in 1481, which had been so effectually used to exterminate the heresy of the Albigenses, met with little opposition. The Jews and the Moors were its first victims, and with them it was permitted to deal unchecked by the power of the state. But the movements of this power were in darkness and secrecy.

So soon as Ferdinand and Isabella had established their government in their joint dominion, they turned to the project of destroying the Saracen power and conquering its territory. But the attack came from Muley Abul Hacen, the ruler of Granada, in 1481. Zahara, on the frontier, was captured and its population carried into slavery. A Spanish force replied by surprising Alhama.

The attempts of the Christian Church to evangelize the western districts of Africa constitute one of the saddest and most discouraging records of history. From the first attempt of the Roman church in 1481, it has been one continuous narrative of a futile struggle against disease and death.