Francis Parkman 199 



living figures, dainty and winsome, or grim and 

 terrible, or sprightly and gay. Never shall be 

 forgotten the beautiful earnestness, the devout se- 

 renity, the blithe courage, of Champlain ; never can 

 we forget the saintly Marie de 1'Incarnation, the 

 delicate and long-suffering Lalemant, the lionlike 

 Brebeuf, the chivalrous Maisonneuve, the grim 

 and wily Pontiac, or that man against whom fate 

 sickened of contending, the mighty and masterful 

 La Salle. These, with many a comrade and foe, 

 have now their place in literature as permanent 

 and sure as Tancred or St. Boniface, as the Cid 

 or Kobert Bruce. As the wand of Scott revealed 

 unsuspected depths of human interest in Border 

 castle and Highland glen, so it seems that North 

 America was but awaiting the magician's touch 

 that should invest its rivers and hillsides with 

 memories of great days gone by. Parkman's sweep 

 has been a wide one, and many are the spots that 

 his wand has touched, from the cliffs of the Sague- 

 nay to the Texas coast, and from Acadia to the 

 western slopes of the Rocky Mountains. 



I do not forget that earlier writers than Park- 

 man had felt something of the picturesqueness and 

 the elements of dramatic force in the history of 

 the conquest of our continent. In particular, the 

 characteristics of the red men and the incidents of 



