' It seems as if these words cast upon the abhorred name of
Borgia one last gleam of grace and mercy.
The development of geographical and allied sciences among the Italians
must, like the history of their voyages, be touched upon but very
briefly. A superficial comparison of their achievements with those of
other nations shows an early and striking superiority on their part.
Where, in the middle of the fifteenth century, could be found, anywhere
but in Italy, such a union of geographical, statistical, and historical
knowledge as was found in Aeneas Sylvius? Not only in his great
geographical work, but in his letters and commentaries, he describes
with equal mastery landscapes, cities, manners, industries and
products, political conditions and constitutions, wherever he can use
his own observation or the evidence of eye-witnesses. What he takes
from books is naturally of less moment. Even the short sketch of that
valley in the Tyrolese Alps where Frederick III had given him a
benefice, and still more his description of Scotland, leaves untouched
none of the relations of human life, and displays a power and method of
unbiased observation and comparison impossible in any but a countryman
of Columbus, trained in the school of the ancients. Thousands saw and,
in part, knew what he did, but they felt no impulse to draw a picture
of it, and were unconscious that the world desired such pictures.
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