XVIII ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA. 



ing savage. He must stroll with him about the ground of ambu.sh which had rung with the death- 

 knell, and must survey the field or defile where the lilies of France had glimmered in the smoke of 

 battle. He who would represent him truly must tell of that hardy courage which the assaults of 

 pain could never lessen. He must describe the days and months, and even years when the light of 

 the sun was intolerable. He must speak of the intervals, counted only by half-hours, when a secretary 

 could read to him. Such were the obstacles which for more than fifty years gave his physicians little 

 hope." But nowhere in the jjages of his books, so distinguished by bright, graphic narrative, is there 

 any evidence of depression of spirits arising from that sutfering which would have daunted so many 

 men, and infused a certain vein of melancholy into their writings. The genius of his intellect, stimu- 

 lated by a deep enthusiasm for the work in hand, always carried him far above all such considera- 

 tions of bodily suffering. After all, in a sense, this same spirit of devotion to a worthy object was 

 the influence that animated the Jesuit missionaries whose story he has so eloquently and accurately 

 told. It was the same spirit of patience and endurance that gave La Salle the coui'age to overcome 

 the difficulties which personal enemies, as well as obdurate nature so long interposed as he followed in 

 the path first broken by Jolliet and Marquette, and at last found his way down the Mississippi to the 

 Gulf of Me.xico. A great book — and he certainly wrote such a book — is as much an event in history 

 as the discovery of new land or river. Much happier, however, than the heroic men of whom he writes, 

 he lived long enough to see the results of his laboiùous life crowned amid the plaudits of the world. 

 It is an opinion now generally entertained that among the historians of the century not one can sur- 

 pass him in clearness of style, in that charm which he throws around the lightest incident, in the 

 fidelity with which he used the material he accumulated at such great expense and despite so many 

 difficulties, in that disregard of all sentiment when it became a question of historic truth ; but there is 

 another and most conspicuous featui'e of his works which has certainly been never equalled by any 

 historian, European or American, and that is his ability to bring before the reader the true natural 

 characteristics of the scenes of his historic narrative. Every place which forms the subject of his 

 history bears the impress of an enthusiastic student of nature in her varied guise — of one who knows 

 every rock, stream, lake, and mountain associated with the incident he relates. Whilst everywhere 

 in his narrative we see the skill and fidelity of a true historian, at the same time we can note the love 

 of the man for the forest and river, for trees and flowers, and all the natural beauties of the country 

 through which he leads us in the movement of his history — we recognize one who has studied Indian 

 life in the wigwam and by the camp fires, who is a poet by the power of his imagination, and his 

 depth of admiration for God's creations, who is a political student who can enter into the animating 

 purpose and motives of ambitious pi-iests and statesmen. A great historian must in these days com- 

 bine all such qualities if he is to raise his work above the level of the mere annalist. It may be said 

 that his love of the picturesque was at times too dominant in his narrative, but if that be a fault or 

 weakness it is one which the general reader of history would wish to see more frequently imitated. 

 At all events, it cannot be said that the imaginative or dramatic faculty of his nature ever led him to 

 conceal the truth as he lead it, or to attempt to deceive his readers by so obscuring his facts as to 

 lead us to wrong inferences. He had the love of the Puritan for tiuth — and none of that narrowness 

 or bigotry that too often made the Puritans unsafe teachei's when it was a matter of opinion or feel- 

 ing. A few of us, especially in French Canada, will differ from seme of his opinions and conclusions 

 on moot-points of history, but no one will doubt his sincerity or desire to be honest. In paying this 

 tribute to Francis Parkman the Eoyal Society of Canada, composed of English and French Canadians, 

 meeting on a common platform of historic study and investigation, need only add that its members 

 recognize in him a writer of whom not simply New England, but Canada is equally proud, since 

 literature knows no geographical or sectional limits, and though we cannot claim him as one of our- 

 selves by birth, we feel he became a Canadian by the tliemc he made his own, and by the elevation 

 and interest he has given to the study of the historj' of this Dominion. 



