urged them on to more distant and more deadly ventures. They burned to do, to suffer, and to die; and now, from out a living martyrdom, they turned their heroic gaze towards an horizon dark with perils yet more appalling, and saw in hope the day when they should bear the cross into the blood-stained dens of the Iroquois" (p. 146). Mr. Bancroft, in his history of the United States, speaks of them with even deeper admiration. We know no American writer who has done otherwise.

This, then, not to multiply citations, is the bright side of the picture. Now for the dark one. The Catholic reader will hardly anticipate that the missionaries who have just been described so eloquently-many of whom were men of noble lineage, who could have enjoyed all the honours which worldly ambition covets; most of whom were men of vigorous and cultivated understandings; and all of whom had received a liberal and refined education-were trained to the labours of missionary life by a "horrible violence to the noblest qualities of manhood" (p. 11). It is Mr. Parkman who says

So.

He has deeply studied the question, and this is his view of the institute of S. Ignatius. It will surprise those who, like ourselves, are intimately acquainted with many Jesuits, whom we have found wholly unconscious of the oppression they have endured, and displaying, in spite of it, "the noblest qualities of manhood." But Mr. Parkman, who feels for them the compassion which they do not feel for themselves, considers them the victims of "horrible violence." And this is not all. Mr. Parkman's heroes, perhaps owing to their pernicious training, do all their works, in Canada and elsewhere, as the blind and submissive agents of an imperious Church, which "astounds the gazing world with prodigies of contradiction: now breathing charity and love, now dark with the passions of hell; now beaming with celestial truth, now masked in hypocrisy and lies; now a virgin, now a harlot " (p. 84). It is not wonderful that the missionaries of such a singular Church as this, infected by her spells, should display similar contradictions of character; that they should be at one time "saints and heroes," at another, dreamers and lunatics. Why should they be more consistent than the Church which they serve, and which knows how to captivate their souls by so subtle a mastery?

Among the Canadian missionaries, few displayed the gifts of an apostle more abundantly than the martyr Jean de Brébeuf. Mr. Parkman calls him "the Ajax of the Huron mission, its truest hero, and its greatest martyr." exhausts in his favour the language of eulogy. "Of the same

He

race as the English earls of Arundel, never had the mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling with so prodigious a constancy " (p. 389). Even the ferocious Iroquois were astounded at his fortitude, under torments of which it is difficult to read the narrative with composure. His whole life was a victory over the flesh, and he had "a courage unconscious of fear, yet redeemed from rashness by a cool and vigorous judgment" (p. 390). He was conspicuous for exquisite common sense, which his sanctity did not obscure; he was a scholar, a gallant gentleman, a fast friend, a gay and cheerful companion; and having been, so to speak, a thousand times a martyr, he was at last slowly tortured to death by the monsters for whose sake he had cheerfully accepted such a life and such an end. Yet it is of Jean de Brébeuf that his American biographer could say-because, like S. Paul, he was familiar with visions and miracles,""extravagant chimeras fed the fire of his zeal;" and that, in the narrative of his superhuman life, "one may throw off trash and nonsense by the cart-load, and find under it all a solid nucleus of saint and hero" (p. 392).

It

It was De Brébeuf himself, as our author notices, who recounted, in obedience to his superiors, the "innumerable visions" and other supernatural incidents of his career. follows that, although "saint and hero," he must either have been all his life the victim of puerile delusions, or a deliberate impostor. Either supposition is more injurious to his Master than to himself. Both are inconsistent with common sense, and with the accepted laws of evidence. But if Mr. Parkman, writing upon subjects wholly beyond his comprehension, talks foolishly, it is fair to him to say that at least he is not inspired by the malice of a sectary. He is simply ignorant of the elements of Christianity, and of God's dealings with His saints. Protestants have no more definite idea of such a man as De Brébeuf than the mass of them have of our Lord Himself. They can appreciate, in a dim and confused way, a heroism which, as they perceive, was not displayed by fits and starts, but was the habit of a whole life, and had no conceivable earthly motive; but they are simply irritated by "visions and miracles," because such events take them into a region full of light for the Christian, but to themselves darker than night, and in which they grope their way with lapses and misadventures painful to the humane spectator. They are acquainted only with a form of religion in which they know the supernatural to be impossible, and which resembles the religion of the Apostles as the skeleton of our museums, to which not a sinew nor a muscle any longer adheres, and which

is held together only by wires and bands, resembles the living man, "in godlike form and majesty erect."

If our author detected, with the characteristic penetration of a Protestant, the "illusions" and other infirmities which marred the piety of De Brébeuf, he was not likely to be blind to the defects of his companions. Jogues and Bressani, Chabanel and Lalemant, Daniel and De Noué, and the rest of this marvellous company, were indeed "saints and heroes," but, nevertheless, do not quite realize Mr. Parkman's ideal. Charles Garnier, who had one brother a Capuchin, another a Carmelite, and a third a Jesuit, was of a frail and delicate constitution. Yet "he entered, not only without hesitation, but with eagerness, on a life which would have tried the boldest. ... His fellow missionaries thought him a saint; . . . all his life was a willing martyrdom" (p. 101). "His companion Bressani says that he would walk thirty or forty miles in the hottest summer day, to baptize some dying Indian, when the country was infested by the enemy." At last the Iroquois slew him. "Thus died Charles Garnier," observes Mr. Parkman, "the favourite child of wealthy and noble parents, nursed in Parisian luxury and ease. His life and his death are his best eulogy. Brébeuf was the lion of the Huron mission, and Garnier was the lamb; but the lamb was as fearless as the lion" (p. 407). Mr. Parkman, contemplating this martyr from the serene heights of Protestant self-sufficiency, regrets that "his sensitive nature, severed from earthly objects, found relief in an ardent adoration of the Virgin Mary." Would that this were all! but " one can discern, amid his admirable virtues, some slight lingerings of mortal vanity." Alas! "he speaks of his great success in baptizing."

Joseph Marie Chaumonot, a martyr only in desire, accepted toils and sufferings before which the vulgar vanity of the greatest military heroes would have quailed; but it was a defect, we are told, of this imperfect Christian to love our Lady, and to believe in miracles. As he was constantly witnessing the latter, his faith in them was not surprising. "A warrior rushed in like a madman, drew his bow, and aimed the arrow at Chaumonot. I looked at him fixedly,' writes the Jesuit, and commended myself in full confidence to S. Michael. Without doubt, this great archangel saved us, for almost immediately the fury of the warrior was appeased "" (p. 145). These things were happening to him and his companions almost every day, but, saint as he was, his religious views, our author assures us, were very defective. S. Michael -who is constantly defending us, as we learn from the Prophet Daniel, assisted by the archangel Gabriel and other princes of

the heavenly host, against more formidable demons than the Iroquois (Dan. ix., x.)—saved his life, but neglected to teach him a more enlightened religion. "The grossest fungus of superstition," writes our author, "that ever grew under the shadow of Rome, was not too much for his omnivorous credulity, and miracles and mysteries were his daily food; yet, such as his faith was, he was ready to die for it" (p. 370).

The Prophet Daniel, let us repeat it, for even Mr. Parkman will hardly deny this, believed exactly what Chaumonot believed; but perhaps some Protestants think that he also was addicted to the " grossest superstition"? One of them has dared to accuse even the Master of the Prophets of favouring this vice. Calvin laments, in loco, that our Blessed Lord did not rebuke what he calls the "superstition" of the woman who came behind Him to touch the hem of His garment. And since Protestants are not afraid to instruct the Church, they are perfectly consistent in undertaking, like Calvin, to teach the Creator. The crime is exactly the same in both cases, because in both man revolts against the Holy Ghost. But Anglicans regards the Church as a purely human institution, composed of many different and opposing confederations, each teaching doctrines contradictory of the others, and naturally do not comprehend that in rebuking the Church they are admonishing the Holy Ghost. This is their excuse. Nesciunt quid faciunt.

One of the chapters of Mr. Parkman's book is entitled "Devotees and Nuns." In this chapter he appreciates, from his own point of view, and with such qualification as he possesses for the task, the holy women who quitted France to aid the Canadian missionaries in their toils. There were Indian women to be instructed, and Indian children to be rescued from a twofold death. Father Le Jeune had said, in a document which reached Europe, "Alas! is there no charitable and virtuous lady who will come to this country to gather up the Blood of Christ, by teaching His word to the little Indian girls?" The invitation was accepted. Neither the rigour of the climate, nor the perils of such a mission, nor the squalid misery which awaited them, could discourage the charity for which such trials were only attractions. Tender and delicate women, who had been the light of many a peaceful home in France, and compared with whom the heroines upon whom Shakespeare lavished all the treasures of his genius were but dross, left all to follow Jesus Christ to this new land. Marie Madeleine de Chauvigny, a young and noble widow, was the foundress of the first convent in Quebec. "Whatever may be thought of the quality of her devotion,"

says our fastidious author, who is evidently "a discerner of spirits," "there can be no reasonable doubt of its sincerity or its ardour." But it is this gentleman's fate, in the execution of a task for which he did not suspect his own unfitness, to contradict himself at every page." One can hardly fail to see in her," he says, "the signs of that restless longing for éclat which with some women is a ruling passion" (p. 173). When a Protestant contemplates an act of Christian heroism for which he has no taste, he straightway attributes it to a bad motive. By the help of this interpretation every difficulty disappears, and he contrives to pull down the supernatural to his own level. Yet it might have occurred to his critical mind that if this lady had a vulgar passion for éclat, the first Canadian winter, and the scenes to which it introduced her, would have effectually extinguished it. The ship which conveyed her from Dieppe bore such a company of Christian women as the Virgin Mother might have acknowledged for her children. Marie Guyard, afterwards the venerable Marie de l'Incarnation, was of the number. Mr. Parkman would have done well to distrust himself for once, and either not to speak at all of such as her, or only with extremest caution. Mystically espoused to her Lord, after a vision which she has recounted herself, she uses in her journal such expressions as we find in the inspired Canticle, and in the lives of many saints of the same order as herself. Of such passages our American Protestant says (we omit worse things, which a Christian reader could not endure), "What is most astonishing is, that a man of sense like Charlevoix, in his Life of Marie de l'Incarnation, should extract them in full, as matter of edification and evidence of saintship" (p. 177). What is much more astonishing is, that Mr. Parkman, who is rational on every topic which does not pertain to religion, should fail to reflect that, even on purely intellectual grounds, Charlevoix was at least as capable of judging such a woman as himself. But every Protestant naïvely supposes that he possesses faculties granted to no other human being.

The newly-arrived nuns, so celebrated in later times as "the Ursulines of Quebec," "were lodged at first in a small wooden tenement under the rock of Quebec, at the brink of the river." We are quoting Mr. Parkman again :—

Here they were soon beset with such a host of children that the floor of their wretched tenement was covered with beds, and their toil had no respite. Then came the small-pox, carrying death and terror among the neighbouring Indians. These thronged to Quebec in misery and desperation. The labours of the Ursulines were prodigious. In the infected air of their miserable hovels, where sick and dying savages covered the floor, and were