1663-1763.] THE FRENCH CANADIANS. 47 



and civil liberties. Born to obey, he lived in con- 

 tented submission, without the wish or the capacity 

 for self-rule. Power, centered in the heart of the 

 system, left the masses inert. The settlements 

 along the margin of the St. Lawrence were like a 

 camp, where an army lay at rest, ready for the 

 march or the battle, and where war and adventure, 

 not trade and tillage, seemed the chief aims of life. 

 The lords of the soil were petty nobles, for the 

 most part soldiers, or the sons of soldiers, proud 

 and ostentatious, thriftless and poor ; and the peo- 

 ple were their vassals. Over every cluster of small 

 white houses glittered the sacred emblem of the 

 cross. The church, the convent, and the roadside 

 shrine were seen at every turn ; and in the towns 

 and villages, one met each moment the black robe 

 of the Jesuit, the gray garb of the Recollet, and 

 the formal habit of the Ursuline nun. The names 

 of saints, St. Joseph, St. Ignatius, St. Francis, were 

 perpetuated in the capes, rivers, and islands, the 

 forts and villages of the land ; and with every day, 

 crowds of simple worshippers knelt in adoration 

 before the countless altars of the Roman faith. 



If we search the world for the sharpest contrast 

 to the spiritual and temporal vassalage of Canada, 

 we shall find it among her immediate neighbors, 

 the Puritans of New England, where the spirit of 

 non-conformity was sublimed to a fiery essence, 

 and where the love of liberty and the hatred of 

 power burned with sevenfold heat. The English 

 colonist, with thoughtful brow and limbs hardened 

 with toil ; calling no man master, yet bowing rev- 



