NEW PUBLICATIONS.
[Lectures and Sermons.] By the Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke, O.P. New York: P. M. Haverty. 1873.
This, the second volume, containing thirty-two of F. Burke’s magnificent discourses, has just been issued by his authorized publisher, Mr. Haverty. In neither matter nor form is it inferior to the splendid volume published a year ago. It contains lectures on most of the important questions of the day, and nowhere better than in these lectures may be found a solution to the great problems that the moral and social condition of our age and country present. The fundamental principles of religion, order, and law treasured up in the Summa of S. Thomas, F. Burke has thoroughly mastered and made his own; and, armed with these, he comes forth in the might of his eloquence, prepared to offer a remedy for every disease, intellectual and moral, of the XIXth century. The principles which he advocates and has proclaimed on the house-tops, from the Merrimac to the Mississippi, are just those by which modern society must be saved, if saved at all. His mission has been called a providential one with reference to the Irish in this country; but we believe it to be a providential one with reference to the American people at large. Never before have the genuine principles of human action been so publicly and brilliantly taught in our land; and the good seed, sown broadcast as it has been, cannot but take root and produce fruit in due season.
Even now the conversions to our holy religion, wrought through the instrumentality of F. Burke’s preaching, are many and widespread. But how great and palpable the good he has done amongst his own people! He has aroused their love for faith and fatherland to enthusiasm; he has made them to realize the important influence they are to exert on this continent; he has taught them to feel their dignity; he has told them what is required of them as citizens of the republic; he has pointed out their dangers, and suggested remedies for their disorders. His constant aim has been to instil into the minds of his countrymen every sentiment of religion, patriotism, and honor that could elevate and ennoble a generous race. Since the days of O’Connell, no one man has done so much for the Irish people, and none has received so much of their gratitude and confidence. It is but a short time ago that we heard a poor fellow say he had resolved “never to get drunk again, lest he might disgrace a country that could produce such a man as F. Tom Burke”—a noble sentiment truly, and one that speaks volumes for the man who could inspire it. We seem to be describing the work of a lifetime, and surely what we have said and had reason to say would make a long lifetime illustrious. Yet in very truth are we but enumerating the labors of a few months. What may not critics be able to write in the future, should F. Burke return to us, and resume his glorious work?
[The Irish Race in the Past and in the Present.] By Rev. Aug. J. Thebaud, S.J. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1873.
F. Thebaud has written us a philosophy of Irish history. He has sought out the characteristics of the Celtic race, and has, we think, discovered them and successfully traced them down from the earliest to the latest annals of that grand old people. He has read Irish history, and reflected on it, and his views, in relation to the Ireland of the past at least, are correct. We are glad that one not an Irishman has written this book; for when an Irishman speaks of his country’s bygone glories, he is pretty generally accused of exaggeration, and the world refuses to be interested in the details of an antique history which it supposes to be in great part the creation of national pride. We have always regretted that Montalembert did not write a history of Ireland, as he once intended to do, and we have never quite forgiven Victor Cousin for the part he took in dissuading the count from carrying out this the cherished scheme of his youth. Had the brilliant author of The Monks of the West compiled the annals of Ireland, the story of Erin’s ancient greatness and civilization would now have its fitting place in the classic lore of Europe. F. Thebaud’s treatment of early Irish history is very satisfactory; he has a real love and admiration for that land—
“History’s sad wonder, whom all lands save one
Gaze on through tears, and name with gentler tone.”
Christian Ireland in its golden age is particularly dear to him, and he delights in describing the glories of that Erin, then
“Lamp of the north when half the world was night,
Now England’s darkness ‘mid her noon of light.”
In dealing with the events of this period, we think the learned author more happy than in his treatment of modern Irish history, though we are not at all disposed to disagree to any great extent with his views of martyred Ireland’s wrongs and their needs. We, too, believe that
... “Ere long
Peace Justice-built the Isle shall cheer.”
From what he says of the present condition of things in that misgoverned country, however, we do think he has not consulted the most reliable authorities on all points; his account of the ignorance and destitution of the poorer classes is certainly somewhat exaggerated. This is about the only thing we find to criticise in a book which is manifestly a labor of love, and executed with an ardor and enthusiasm that love alone can enlist. F. Thebaud’s work is a valuable and highly important contribution to Irish history. To our Irish fellow-citizens it commends itself. To our American and non-Catholic readers who want to form correct views of Ireland and its people, we commend it.
[The Limerick Veteran]; or, The Foster Sisters. By Agnes M. Stewart. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1873.
This is a historical romance, and a very good one of its kind. Throughout its two hundred and fifty pages thrilling facts and pleasing fiction are well and judiciously blended. The style is really good, and the name of Agnes Stewart is sufficient warrant that the tone is high and unexceptionable. If there were anything in a name, we might be disposed to criticise it in this particular; for, in very truth, the connection between the title and the tale that hangs thereon is slight. The story opens in Scotland, and the bonny Highlands are kept pretty well in view throughout, though the scene shifts to England, France, and Germany, and the curtain falls on a Christmas scene by the frozen St. Lawrence. In a novel such as this we do believe; it amuses, it instructs; from such a book much valuable history may be learned in a pleasing way.
The publishers have done Miss Stewart justice by giving to the public her graceful story in an appropriate form.
[Sins of the Tongue.] By Monseigneur Landroit, Abp. of Rheims. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1873.
Mgr. Landroit is already favorably known to the English reader by a series of discourses for the use of women living in the world, translated under the title of The Valiant Woman. The present work not only treats of the subject indicated by the title, but also of “Envy and Jealousy,” “Rash Judgments,” “Christian Patience,” and “Grace”; and is intended for those who would naturally derive greater spiritual advantage from thoughtful reading than from formal meditation.
From the unrestful condition of things in this age and country it probably comes that there are fewer vocations to a contemplative life, and less inclination to habits of systematic contemplation, than in older and more settled communities. Hence, works like the present are perhaps more appropriate to those not consecrated to the religious state than many of the ordinary books of meditation. We therefore welcome it as we do all judicious efforts to assist persons in the world to perform the duties to which they may be called, and to resist the temptations by which they may be assailed.
The Marthas are likely always to outnumber the Marys, and should have every assistance at the hands of those capable of leading them in the path of holiness. The church in this and similar ways is ever adapting its aids to the varying circumstances by which her children may be surrounded.
[Out of Sweet Solitude.] By Eleanor C. Donnelly. Philadelphia: Lippincott & Co. 1873.
This modest little volume, a “first book,” gives us confidence that the authoress will fill a useful place in the Catholic literature of America. We say a useful place, for poetry like hers is much in demand in our Catholic homes.
The three divisions of the volume—“Sacred Legends,” “Poems of the Civil War,” and “Miscellaneous Poems”—present a pleasing variety, both of matter and of style. Some of her lyrics are more accurate than others; and some of her descriptions would be stronger with fewer epithets. But her verse is, for the most part, as smooth as simple. And while no one can charge her with affectation, she is certainly not lacking in originality.
There is but a single line on which we shall make a stricture. It occurs in a poem called “The Skeleton at the Feast”: the sixth line of the fifth stanza, p. 77. She speaks of
“The flame
Lit for the damned from all eternity.”
Now, God did not create “from eternity”; still less are any of his creatures damned “from eternity.” We therefore pronounce this line a slip of the pen, and beg that it may be altered in the next edition.
In conclusion, we thankfully welcome the authoress into the number of our Catholic poetesses, and hope that ere long she will be again tempted to come to us “out of sweet solitude.”
[Old New England Traits.] Edited by George Lunt. New York: Published by Hurd & Houghton. Cambridge: The Riverside Press. 1873.
Any one acquainted with the ancient city of Newburyport will have a special interest in the reminiscences which this very readable book contains. To those who are not, it will give a very perfect idea of the New England of the past, which is even now pretty well preserved in these old seaport towns of Massachusetts. There is not a dry or tedious page in it from beginning to end, and, both in matter and style, it is just the kind of a book for any time of year, but particularly for the summer. At the end, there are a number of ghost stories. Ghosts seem to thrive well in Newburyport, judging from recent developments as well as these more ancient ones, and there can be no doubt that the reputation of Essex County for the preternatural is really very well founded.
BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.
From W. G. Simons & Co., Richmond: Pastoral Letter on Christian Education. By the Rt. Rev. James Gibbons, D.D. 8vo, paper, pp. 19.
From P. O’Shea, New York: Essays on Various Subjects. By H. E. Card. Wiseman. Vol. IV. 12mo, pp. 300.
From Lee & Shepard, Boston: The Year. By D. C. Colesworthy. 12mo, pp. 120.
From E. O’Keefe, New York: Third Annual Report of St. Vincent’s Home for Boys, 10 Vine Street, Brooklyn. Paper, 24mo, pp. 16.
From D. Appleton & Co., New York: Insanity in its Relation to Crime. By W. A. Hammond, M.D. 8vo, pp. 77.—A Review of Prof. Reese’s Review of the Wharton Trial. By W. E. A. Aikin, M.D., LL.D. Paper, 8vo, pp. 20.
From the Author: Religion in the University: Being a Review of the Subject as agitated in the Legislature of Michigan. By S. B. McCracken. Paper, 8vo, pp. 19.
From the General Theological Library, Boston: Eleventh Annual Report, April 21, 1873. Paper, 8vo, pp. 44.
From Holt & Williams, New York: Babolain. By Gustave Droz. 18mo, pp. 306.
From Burns & Oates, London: The Question of Anglican Ordinations Discussed. By E. E. Estcourt, M.A., F.S.A. With Original Documents and Fac-similes. 8vo, pp. xvi.-381.-cxvi.—A Theory of the Fine Arts. By S. M. Lanigan, A.B., T.C.D. 12mo, pp. xiii.-194.—The Prophet of Carmel. By Rev. C. B. Garside, M.A. 18mo, pp. xiii.-348.
From T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh: The Works of S. Aurelius Augustine—Vol. VII., On the Trinity. Vol. VIII., The Sermon on the Mount, and The Harmony of the Evangelists.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XVII., No. 102.—SEPTEMBER, 1873.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
[SHEA’S CHARLEVOIX.]
When the history of American Catholic literature comes to be written, the name of John Gilmary Shea will hold one of the most honorable places in the record. So much rough work has been needed to prepare the ground for the American church, so much polemical discussion has been called forth by our peculiar position in the midst of a hostile and prejudiced community, so many problems of philosophy and social science have pressed upon us for consideration, and the demand for books of education and devotion has been so urgent, that few of our writers have found occasion to apply themselves to strictly literary and historical studies or to those branches of criticism which are included in the department of polite letters. And yet how richly this neglected field of research would repay the labors of the Catholic investigator! The early history of many parts of the North American continent is only a chapter in the history of the Catholic Church. The most picturesque characters in the early American annals are the Catholic voyagers of France and Spain, the settlers of Canada, and Florida, and the Pacific coast, and the missionaries who followed them across the ocean, and pushed forward in advance of them into the savage wilderness. How tame and mean appear the quarrels of the Plymouth settlers with hostile Indians, and rival adventurers, and preaching sectaries, and bewitched old women, after one has read of the heroism of a Jogues and a Brebœuf, and the romantic travels of the discoverer of the Mississippi. The settlement of Virginia was a prosaic and commonplace affair beside the settlement of Canada. The monks who accompanied the armies of the Spanish conquerors passed through experiences of the most thrilling kind, whose story has been only imperfectly outlined in the glowing pages of Prescott. Within the limits of the present Union, the missionary has been the chief actor in many an extraordinary scene of dramatic interest, and the hero of many a daring enterprise. Simple-minded F. Mark traversing the desert in search of the seven mythical cities of New Mexico; the gentle Marquette guiding his canoe down the great river of the West, and breathing his last prayer on the shores of the mighty lake; Hennepin, pattern of grotesque mendacity; La Salle, model of a magnanimous commander and a daring explorer—such are among the infinite variety of figures in the early Catholic history of our country. Its later annals are not inferior in interest to the more remote. Even yet the task of the pioneer is not complete, and startling incidents are still common in the chronicles of missionary adventure.
No man has done more than Mr. Shea to preserve the record of all these events and all these personages. For more than twenty years, he has devoted himself to the study of the old materials for American Catholic history. He gave to the world the first authentic and complete narrative of the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi, and brought to light the manuscript narratives of the actors in that most important and striking achievement. He prepared the only connected account of the various Catholic missions among the Indian tribes, from the discovery of the country to the present day. He was one of the joint authors of the only general history of the American church. To these works, and a large number of books of a miscellaneous character, short histories, religious biographies, statistical publications, etc., he has recently added the result of patient and learned research into the Indian languages; he has recovered the grammars and vocabularies prepared by the old missionaries; he has assisted in the preparation of various works on the Indians printed at the cost of the United States government; he has edited an extraordinary variety of historical collections and monographs; and, finally, he has prepared for the press a number of hitherto unpublished narratives, memoirs, and relations in connection with the early French and Spanish settlements. The value of these publications can hardly be overstated. The care and judgment of the editor have been universally recognized by the highest authorities; and though Mr. Shea can hardly expect an adequate pecuniary recompense for his time, his labor, and his outlay, he has been rewarded in a most flattering way by the respect and gratitude of historical students, Catholic and Protestant alike.
His latest work is one of the most laborious of his life, and one of the most splendid in its results. It is a translation, with notes, of the History and General Description of New France, from the French of the Rev. P. F. X. de Charlevoix, S.J. The first of the six sumptuous volumes of this elegant work appeared from the author’s own press in this city in 1866, and the last was issued at the close of 1872. As we shall see further on, Mr. Shea has expended upon the “translation and notes” an extraordinary amount of pains of which the modest title-page affords no hint; but the book was well worth the trouble. No history of America can be written without a constant reference to the labors of F. Charlevoix. He is our best and sometimes our only authority for the transactions in all the French North American settlements. Of many of the scenes that he describes he was an eye-witness. He was a diligent and conscientious student; he had access to important and little-known sources of information; he sympathized with the sentiment of the early French explorers, and caught as by instinct the spirit of those curious expeditions wherein the priest and the peddler marched side by side through the wilderness for the glory of God and of France, and the spread simultaneously of the Gospel and the fur-trade. Born in the north of France in 1682, Charlevoix entered the Society of Jesus, and was sent to the Canada mission when he was about twenty-three years old. He spent four years in America, returning to France in 1709, and teaching philosophy for some time in various colleges of his society. Eleven years later, the king sent him to make a tour among the French settlements of the New World, and a curious account of this adventurous journey is preserved in his Journal of a Voyage to North America, a translation of which was published in London in 1761. He landed at Quebec in October, 1720, visited Montreal and other settlements on the St. Lawrence, and the following spring set out on his remarkable canoe voyage to the Gulf of Mexico. This took him through Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron, and Michigan. On the 6th of August, 1721, he entered the St. Joseph River, at the southern end of Lake Michigan. Thence by a tedious portage he reached the head-waters of the Kankakee. Towards the end of September, he found himself on the Illinois, and on the 9th of October his frail bark floated on the waters of the Mississippi. Stopping at various posts along the bank, he was nearly three months in reaching New Orleans, whence he embarked in April, 1722, for Santo Domingo. Wrecked on one of the Florida keys, he made his way back to Louisiana in an open boat, and at the end of June took ship again at Biloxi. After touching at Havana, and narrowly escaping another disaster, he made Cape François, in Santo Domingo, and there found a merchant ship, which took him home.
Before starting on this extensive and arduous tour, he had begun a series of histories of all the countries unknown to Europeans previous to the XIVth century, giving to that tolerably comprehensive portion of the universe the general name of the New World. The first instalment of his task, a History and Description of Japan, was printed at Rouen in three volumes in 1715. He had no expectation of completing the whole series of proposed histories. That was an enterprise beyond the powers of one man; but “the same may be said of this,” he remarked, “as of the discovery of America: the worst was done when it was once begun; there is, then, every reason to believe that it will be continued after me, and that, if I have the advantage of suggesting the idea, those who succeed me will have the glory of perfecting it.” The second fruit of the scheme was the History of Santo Domingo, which appeared at Paris in two quarto volumes, in 1730. The third was the History of New France, in three quarto volumes, in 1744; and there was a fourth book, a History of Paraguay, in three quarto volumes, in 1756. F. Charlevoix died in 1761, having been for more than twenty years one of the principal workers on the famous Journal de Trévoux.
Of the four works embraced in his uncompleted series, three are little known on this side of the ocean, except in the libraries of the curious. The History of New France, however, has long enjoyed an American celebrity, through the frequent references to it in the pages of modern historians; and Mr. Shea is not unreasonably surprised that it should so long have gone untranslated. Fidelity is by no means its only merit. It is well planned, and written with a carefulness, simplicity, and good judgment which give it a very respectable, if not a very high, literary character. Its style is not remarkable for eloquence, but it is chaste and direct. It is never ambitious, but it is always agreeable; rarely picturesque, but never dry. Prefixing to his work a comprehensive chronology of European explorations and settlements in the New World (taking that phrase in his own extended application), and an excellent bibliographical account of the numerous authors whom he has consulted, he begins his narrative proper with the voyages of Cortereal and Verazzano to Newfoundland, between 1500 and 1525. It is with the expedition of Jacques Cartier, however, in 1534, that the story of the French settlements in North America properly commences. Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence, visited the site of Montreal, and planned a town there, though he did not succeed in making a permanent establishment. There is a curious illustration in this part of the narrative of the simplicity which gives F. Charlevoix’s book such a peculiar charm. Misled by an unfaithful abridgment of Cartier’s narrative, the good father gently rebukes the traveller for certain marvellous tales which he is unjustly accused of bearing back to France: but there is one strange story to which the reverend historian is evidently more than half disposed to attach credit. An Indian named Donnacona is reported to have told Cartier that in a remote part of the land “were men who had but one leg and thigh, with a very large foot, two hands on the same arm, the waist extremely square, the breast and head flat, and a very small mouth; that still further on he had seen pigmies, and a sea the water of which was fresh. In fine, that, ascending the Saguenay, you reach a country where there are men dressed like us, who live in cities, and have much gold, rubies, and copper.” Now, by ascending the Saguenay, Charlevoix conjectures, and turning west, an Indian might reach Lake Assiniboin, and thence penetrate to New Mexico, where the Spaniards had begun to settle—a conjecture which certainly betrays a rather loose idea of American geography. The pigmies he supposes to be the Esquimaux. But of the men with one leg, he remarks that the story is “very strange.” He does not accept, but he certainly does not reject it. Nay, he cites a long account by an Esquimaux girl, who was in Quebec while he was there in 1720, of a kind of men among her country people “who had only one leg, one thigh, and a very large foot, two hands on the same arm, a broad body, flat head, small eyes, scarcely any nose, and a very small mouth”; they were always in a bad humor, and could remain under water three-quarters of an hour at a time. “As for the monstrous men,” he concludes, “described by the slave of M. de Courtemanche and by Donnacona, and the headless men killed, it is pretended, by an Iroquois hunter a few years since while hunting, it is easy to believe that there is some exaggeration; but it is easier to deny extraordinary facts than to explain them; and, moreover, are we at liberty to reject whatever we cannot explain? Who can pretend to know all the caprices and mysteries of nature?”
From Canada our historian passes suddenly to Florida, which he defines as “all that part of the continent of America lying between the two Mexicos, New France, and North Carolina.” To this part of the new world Admiral de Coligni sent out a colony of Huguenots in 1562 under John de Ribaut, who built a fort at Port Royal, near the site of Beaufort, South Carolina. In all the early settlements of America, there is the same story to be told of avarice and childish folly. The colonists were not settlers, but adventurers. They had come in search of a land where they could grow rich without work, and pick up gold and silver with no more trouble than the occasional killing of a few Indians. They depended for sustenance upon what they brought from France and the provisions they might purchase from the savages. But there was little to be obtained from a race of hunters who were half the year themselves on the brink of starvation, and the fresh supplies promised from home were often delayed. It is almost incredible that no attempt should have been made to cultivate the fertile lands upon which they established themselves; but year after year the same blunder was repeated: winter found the adventurers famishing; and promising colonies were broken up by their reckless improvidence. Such was the fate of Ribaut’s settlement at Port Royal. The commander had gone home to obtain re-enforcements. When the re-enforcements arrived under Laudonniere in 1564, Port Royal had been abandoned. The colonists had built a vessel, caulked the seams with moss, twisted the bark of trees for ropes, used their shirts for sails, and, with a short supply of provisions and a crew composed of soldiers, had put to sea. They suffered terribly. The water gave out, and some died of thirst. After they had eaten their last shoe and their last scrap of leather, a soldier named Lachau offered the sacrifice of his own life to save the rest. They ate Lachau, and drank his blood. Soon afterward, they sighted land, and about the same time fell in with an English vessel.
Laudonniere established himself on the St. John’s River, in Florida. F. Charlevoix tells an interesting story of his curious dealings with the Indians and the dissensions of his disorderly colonists. He seems to have been upon the whole a fair commander, but the fatal mistake of all these adventurers soon brought him to the brink of ruin. Provisions gave out. The expected relief from France was delayed. Fish and game grew scarce. In July, 1567, Laudonniere was trying to patch up his one small vessel to return home, when he was unexpectedly relieved by a visit from Sir John Hawkins with four English ships. Hawkins treated the suffering Frenchmen with great generosity. He gave them bread and wine, replenished their stores of clothing and munitions, offered the whole party a passage home to France, and finally persuaded them to purchase one of his vessels which was better fitted for their use than their own. Laudonniere now hastened his preparations for the voyage, and was actually weighing anchor, when Ribaut entered the river with seven vessels, and set about restoring the dismantled Fort Caroline, and planning an expedition after gold to the distant mountains of Apalache. But this whole chapter is a tale of surprises. Six days after the arrival of Ribaut, another squadron appeared at the mouth of the river. It consisted of six Spanish ships under the command of Don Pedro Menendez, whom Philip II. had despatched to conquer Florida, and drive out the heretics.
The story now becomes a horrible narrative of battle, treachery, and murder. Menendez attacked the French vessels without doing much injury, and then, hastening southward to the spot which he had already selected as the site of a settlement, began the building of St. Augustine. From St. Augustine he marched with five hundred men through the swamps, in the midst of a long and violent storm, surprised Fort Caroline, and put most of the garrison to the sword. At the spot of the execution, Menendez erected a stone with the inscription, “I do this, not as to Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans.” Nearly three years afterwards, Dominic de Gourgues, after a semi-piratical cruise along the coast of Africa and among the West India Islands, crossed over from Cuba to the mainland to avenge the slaughter of his countrymen. He reached the fort unsuspected, and took it by escalade, with the help of a large force of Indians. Then the prisoners were led to the scene of the former massacre, and all hanged upon a tree, with the inscription: “I do this, not as to Spaniards nor as to maranes,[195] but as to traitors, robbers, and murderers.” Such is the story of Dominic de Gourgues, as Charlevoix gives it after contemporary French accounts. No Spanish version of it is known to exist, and Mr. Shea points out in a note the reasons for regarding it with some suspicion. The conqueror could not hold what he had won. Burning the fort, and destroying all the plunder that he was unable to carry away, he hastened back to France; and so ended the history of French Florida.
It was about thirty years after this that the Marquis de la Roche, a gentleman of Brittany, received from Henri IV. a commission as lieutenant-general of the king “in the countries of Canada, Hochelaga, Newfoundland, Labrador, River of the Great Bay [St. Lawrence], Norimbegue, and adjacent lands,” and fitted out a vessel to explore his territory. Landing on Sable Island, ninety miles from the mainland of Nova Scotia (1598), he left there a colony of forty convicts whom he had drawn from the French prisons, coasted awhile along the shores of Acadia (Nova Scotia), without accomplishing anything of value, and then went back to France. Contrary winds prevented his taking off the wretched colony of Sable Island, and it was not until seven years later that the king, hearing of the adventure, sent a ship to their relief. Only twelve remained alive, and these were brought to court in the same guise in which they were found, “covered with sealskin, with hair and beard of a length and disorder that made them resemble the pretended river-gods, and so disfigured as to inspire horror. The king gave them fifty crowns apiece, and sent them home released from all process of law.” The expedition of De Monts and Pontgravé (1604) was more fortunate. It resulted in the settlement of Port Royal (Annapolis) by M. de Poutrincourt, under a grant from M. de Monts, afterwards confirmed by the crown; it brought forward Samuel de Champlain, who was soon to play so distinguished a part in the exploration and settlement of Canada; and it offered a career to the Jesuit missionaries, whose heroism reflected so much glory upon the colony. The king had intimated to M. de Poutrincourt, when he confirmed the grant of Port Royal, that it was proper to invite the Jesuits to the new colony; and, by his majesty’s desire, two priests were selected from the many who volunteered to go. These were F. Peter Biard and F. Enemond Masse. Strange to say, the first difficulties they encountered were from their own countrymen. “M. de Poutrincourt was a very worthy man,” says Charlevoix, “sincerely attached to the Catholic religion; but the calumnies of the so-called Reformers had produced an impression on his mind, and he was fully determined not to take them to Port Royal. He did not, however, show anything of this to the king, who, having given his orders, had no doubt but that they were executed with all speed. The Jesuits thought so; and F. Biard, at the commencement of the year [1608], proceeded to Bordeaux, where he was assured the embarkation would take place. He was much surprised to see no preparation there; and he waited in vain for a whole year. The king, informed of this, reproached M. de Poutrincourt sharply; and the latter pledged his word to the king that he would no longer defer obeying his orders. He actually prepared to go; but, as he said nothing of embarking the missionaries, F. Cotton paid him a visit, to bring him to do so in a friendly way. Poutrincourt begged him to be good enough to postpone it till the following year, as Port Royal was by no means in a condition to receive the fathers. So frivolous a reason was regarded by F. Cotton as a refusal, but he did not deem it expedient to press the matter or inform the king. M. de Poutrincourt accordingly sailed for Acadia; and, with a view of showing the court that the ministry of the Jesuits was not necessary in the conversion of the heathen, he had scarcely arrived before he sent the king a list of twenty-five Indians baptized in haste.” Meanwhile, the king died, and Poutrincourt considered himself thereupon released from his obligation. It was in this difficulty that the Marchioness de Guercheville, whose name is so honorably associated with American adventure, declared herself the protectress of the missions. But the story of the troubles which this powerful advocate had to overcome gives us a curious idea of the manner in which American affairs were regulated at the French court. Biencourt, the son of M. de Poutrincourt, was about sailing for Acadia, and consented to take the missionaries. When the fathers reached Dieppe, Biencourt had changed his mind, or been overruled by his two Huguenot partners, and passage was refused. Mme. de Guercheville had recourse to the queen mother, who gave a peremptory order that the Jesuits should be taken on board. The order was laughed at, and nobody attempted to enforce it. Then Mme. de Guercheville raised a subscription, bought off the two Calvinists, and proceeded to treat with Biencourt. Not finding his title clear, she purchased of M. de Monts all his lapsed privileges, with the purpose of reviving them, and formed a partnership with Biencourt, under which the subsistence of the missionaries was to be drawn from the fishery and fur trade. Thus at last a woman accomplished what the king had failed in, and F. Biard and F. Masse reached the scene of their labors in 1611.
Mme. de Guercheville soon fell out with Poutrincourt, and resolved to found a colony of her own. She despatched a ship under the Sieur de la Saussaye in 1613. The settlers landed on Mount Desert, and there began a settlement, bringing FF. Biard and Masse from Port Royal, and having with them also two other Jesuits, a priest named Quentin, and a lay brother, Du Thet. The narrative of the destruction of this settlement as well as Port Royal by the English free-booting adventurer Argall, from Virginia, is familiar to all American readers. The colony had not yet assumed a regulated form when the Englishman swept down upon it, carried some of the settlers to Virginia, and sent the rest to sea in a small bark. The latter, among whom was F. Masse, were picked up by a French ship, and carried to St. Malo. The others, after much harsh treatment at Jamestown from Sir Thomas Dale, were taken back to Acadia with an expedition sent to complete the demolition of the French posts. Argall performed his task thoroughly, and set sail again for Virginia. Of his three vessels, scattered in a storm, one was lost; another, under his own command, reached Jamestown in safety; the third, bearing Fathers Biard and Quentin (Brother du Thet had been killed in Argall’s first attack), and having one Turnell for captain, was driven to the Azores, and forced to seek shelter at Fayal. Here the Jesuits had only to complain of the outrages to which they had been subjected, and they would have been at once avenged. Turnell was alarmed, and begged them to keep concealed when the officers of the port visited his vessel. “They consented with good grace. The visit over, the English captain had liberty to buy all that he needed, after which he again weighed anchor, and the rest of his voyage was fortunate. But he found himself in a new embarrassment on arriving in England: he had no commission, and, although he represented that he had accidentally been separated from his commander, he was looked upon as a deserter from Virginia, and put in prison, from which he was released only on the testimony of the Jesuits. After this time, he was unwearied in publishing the virtue of the missionaries, twice his liberators, and especially the service they had done him at Fayal, where they returned good for evil as they so generously did, foregoing all the advantages which they might have obtained by making themselves known. Nothing, indeed, was omitted to compensate for them in England, where they were very kindly treated as long as they remained.”
The settlements in Canada proper, however, were now firmly established, and Quebec was rapidly becoming prosperous. The early history of this town, the adventures and discoveries of Champlain, the expeditions of the settlers against the Iroquois, and the surrender of Quebec to the English under Kirk (or Kertk), who was a Frenchman by birth, though an officer in the English service, are told by F. Charlevoix at considerable length. It was in 1629 that Quebec fell, and three years afterwards the whole colony was restored to France by the treaty of St. Germain. Champlain returned with the title of Governor of New France in 1633, and began at once that zealous and enlightened career of missionary labor by which he has won so glorious a fame. For we may well style him a missionary. Entrusted with the temporal government of the young colony, it was not his part to explore the wilderness with crucifix and missal, to venture into the cabins of the savages as a teacher of the Gospel, to brave martyrdom, to suffer unheard-of tortures, even to the stake; but he nevertheless fulfilled an important, an almost indispensable, function in the establishment of the Canada missions. He was the best friend and patron of the Jesuits and other heroes who gave their lives so freely among the Indians. He took care that a number of these devoted priests should be invited to the colony, and that the settlers themselves should give an example of Christian demeanor that might do credit to their teachers. “In a short time,” says Charlevoix, “almost all who composed the new colony were seen to follow the example of their governor, and make an open and sincere profession of piety. The same attention was continued in subsequent years, and there soon arose in this part of America a generation of true Christians, among whom reigned the simplicity of the primitive ages of the church, and whose posterity have not lost sight of the great example left them by their ancestors. The consolation which such a change afforded the laborers appointed to cultivate this transplanted vineyard so sweetened the crosses of the most painful mission ever perhaps established in the New World, that what they wrote to their brethren in France created among them a real eagerness to go and share their labors. The annual Relations which we have of these happy times, and the constant tradition preserved in the country, both attest that there was an indescribable unction attached to this Indian mission which made it preferred to many others infinitely more brilliant and even more fruitful.” Champlain’s career, however, as governor was unhappily too short. He died on Christmas day, in 1635. “He may well be called,” says the historian, “the father of New France. He had good sense, much penetration, very upright views, and no man was ever more skilled in adopting a course in the most complicated affairs. What all admired most in him was his constancy in following up his enterprises; his firmness in the greatest dangers; a courage proof against the most unforeseen reverses and disappointments; ardent and disinterested patriotism; a heart tender and compassionate for the unhappy, and more attentive to the interests of his friends than his own; a high sense of honor, and great probity. His memoirs show that he was not ignorant of anything that one of his profession should know; and we find in him a faithful and sincere historian, an attentively observant traveller, a judicious writer, a good mathematician, and an able mariner. But what crowns all these good qualities is the fact that in his life, as well as in his writings, he shows himself always a truly Christian man, zealous for the service of God, full of candor and religion. He was accustomed to say, what we read in his memoirs, ‘that the salvation of a single soul was worth more than the conquest of an empire, and that kings should seek to extend their domain in heathen countries only to subject them to Christ.’”
We have insensibly gone deeper into these attractive volumes than we intended, and we must pass over the remaining books, which record the growth of the Canadian settlements, the wars with the Indians after Champlain’s death, the hostilities with the English, and the progress of the missions. Neither can we linger over the fascinating story of Marquette’s voyage down the Mississippi, or the expeditions, of La Salle, or the various attempts at colonizing the shores of the Mexican Gulf. What little space remains for us we must give to an examination of a portion of Mr. Shea’s labor which has not yet been duly estimated. He has given much more than a translation of F. Charlevoix’s Histoire. The text is rendered with great care, and we presume with great faithfulness, into simple, graceful, and idiomatic English. The peculiarities of the original, in the orthography of proper names and in other particulars, are all preserved. It is indeed Charlevoix’s work, as exactly as any work can be reproduced in a language different from its author’s. But Mr. Shea has bestowed upon it an editorial supervision which nearly doubles its value. With extraordinary zeal, learning, and intelligence, he has traced almost every statement to its source, collated rare authorities, and in modest and compact foot-notes, whose number must amount to several thousands, has corrected errors, identified localities, and thrown a perfect flood of light upon doubtful passages and controverted statements. The patient industry, the rare judgment, and the unassuming scholarship which Mr. Shea has brought to the execution of this noble task can only be appreciated by one who has studied his work with some care, and to whom familiarity with the subject has taught something of its difficulties. He has not only been at the pains of consulting the authors to whom F. Charlevoix expressly refers, weighing the soundness of F. Charlevoix’s conclusions from their testimony, and correcting his citations, but he has made it a point to discover the authorities whom the good father followed without quoting, and he has often pursued devious statements backward through a score of forgotten books, until he has reached at last the sober truth from which they started. Doing this without parade, without verbosity, and with an icy impartiality, Mr. Shea has approved himself a model editor.
The outward appearance of the six volumes will delight the heart of the fastidious collector. Such beautiful and symmetrical arrangement of the generous pages, such royal elegance of type, such rich and refined tints, such noble margins, and such magnificent paper—every leaf stout enough to stand alone—these things make up the gorgeous apparel in which the work has been dressed, we may say, by Mr. Shea’s own hands. Excellent engravings add not merely to its appearance but its value. There are steel-plate portraits of governors, adventurers, and missionaries; there are fac-similes of autographs; there are copies of curious old maps and plans. Finally, the book is furnished with a copious and systematic index—and so Mr. Shea shows himself conscientious alike as an editor and publisher.
[MADAME AGNES.]
FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.