THE Abbé Casgrain is a veritable product of his race, his tongue, his religion, his locality. When he writes, he writes as a Frenchman, as a French Canadian, as a Catholic, and he writes in the French language. In every one of these capacities he deserves well of his race, his tongue, his religion, and his country. To him the Celts are the embodiment of everything good in the Turanian stock, and of these no race equals the French, and of the French no branch approaches the Canadian, preserved from the contamination of the world in the remoteness to which it has been assigned by the special care of Providence. Perhaps, too, of this chosen people, none are quite equal to those along the lower St. Lawrence, or, more particularly, those dwelling upon the chilly side of Cape Diamond.

It is not only his people who owe him much; the students of colonial history, the readers, the writers, all are indebted to him. He is indefatigable, enthusiastic. What he says of Parkman's tirelessness and painstaking may be said of his own: he crosses rivers and lakes to locate a stockade; he traverses seas to make sure of a manuscript. His latest labors would be well worth recording. In 1888, while in France, he unearthed eleven volumes of manuscript, containing the journal of Montcalm, the journal of Lévis, the correspondence of these two generals, as well as that of Vaudreuil, Bourlamaque, Bigot, and a crowd of other officers, civil and military, the reports of divers expeditions, and the letters and official papers of the court of Versailles of the epoch of 1755-60. He did more: he induced the Quebec government to take upon itself the publication of these documents, he overseeing the task; and the world will thus benefit by his sagacity as well

as by his discovery. To complete this collection, he has had copies made of the documents filed in the Ministry of the Marine and Colonies and that of War at Paris, and this series alone comprehends nineteen huge volumes in folio. He has made abstracts from the collections in the national archives and the principal Parisian libraries, as well as from those in the provinces and in the possession of private families. In his collection are the writings of Bougainville which treat of Canada, his journal and correspondence; and these constitute two great folios of eleven hundred and eightyfour closely written pages. From the little town of Foix among the Pyrenees, where he brought Jaubert's letters to light, to the British Museum and Public Record Office, and to the libraries and government offices of the United States, to say nothing of those of his own country,: try, wherever, indeed, anything bearing upon that portentous epoch was to be found, he has delved untiringly and to good purpose.

This brief résumé of what one collector has done shows what a man can do who is really in earnest; it conveys, too, an adequate realization of the labor and research of which this latest of his works, Montcalm et Lévis,' is a result, and of the value that can be put upon his statement of facts. It may be said, in brief, that this great collection of materia historica has enabled him to correct some errors, to dissipate many obscurities, to cast upon the annals side lights which illuminate the story and even modify its character, and has permitted him accurately to weigh divers contradictory and contending assertions and to settle disputed points. Nothing, it would seem, could stand in the way

1 Montcalm et Lévis. Par l'Abbé R. H. CASGRAIN. Quebec: J. Demers et Frère. 1891.

of a connected, continued, and accurate tatement of facts; nothing could mar the completeness and harmony of narration. There is no room left for error save that made by the original writers, or that to which fallibility of judgment and passion and prejudice may expose the historian: his reflections and his decisions are all that should remain subjects of appeal.

In 1885 the Abbé Casgrain concluded his notice of the life and works of Francis Parkman with the assertion that the true history of Canada was yet to be written in the English language. In seeking the reasons for this conclusion, we are led to his observations upon The Old Régime in Canada, where, though the criticism be glowing in everything relating to style, to the conception of the subject and disposition of matter, to the enthusiasm of the writer, his conscientious adherence to the truth, and his equally conscientious toil and patience, the critic denies to the historian the possession of certain qualifications without which he cannot even comprehend his subject. Mr. Parkman, says the abbé, seems to reject everything which does not pertain directly to the present life, everything which is connected with a better world and with our future destiny. He examines and judges all men and things, thoughts and deedsfrom a purely natural and human point of view. Therefore his gaze does not dwell upon the finest side of Canadian history; but that which is greatest, most generous, and most heroic in this country's past either utterly escapes him, or at best but skims the surface of his mind. In brief, Mr. Parkman, in his critic's eyes, is a rationalist, and consequently, however picturesque and vivid may be his account of those who exhibit faith as the mainspring of their deeds, it is not possible for him to grasp the real character of a people upon whose annals, at almost every page, is to be found the imprint of those supernatural NO. 414.

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motives which animate men and which were the very soul of the colony. The abbé adds that he would be still more severe were he to criticise Montcalm and Wolfe, the latest production of the historian; thus leaving us to infer that the lack of spiritual qualification so painfully apparent in Mr. Parkman's early work is still more so in his late one.

The abbé, however, has ventured further; he himself has essayed the part of historian, and historian of the very period which the New Englander is fresh from recounting. He tells the same story over again, and we have reason to expect his presentation of the subject to be in an altogether different light, and surrounded by another atmosphere; for here we have a writer who cannot help comprehending his subject, inasmuch as he has the principles which belong to an order of things the Bostonian does not admit; here we are to behold those supernatural motives which animate men, and which were the very soul of the colony; here will be rejection of all that pertains to present existence, and acceptance of that which relates to a better world and our future destiny only; and men and things, thoughts and deeds, will be examined and judged from a point of view not natural and human. It must be granted that what is grandest, most generous, and most heroic in the Canadian past does not suffer at the Canadian historian's hands, even though it requires argument to prove its existence and iteration to set it forth; but as to the rest one remark will suffice, - there is not a trace of a higher life or of loftier principles than those which are revealed in the pages of the rationalist; no supernatural motives animate the unmistakably earthy Canadians; we breathe no rarer atmosphere, we quaff no purer streams, and, to our great relief, the point of view is quite natural and human. From beginning to end there is a total absence of everything which could suggest that the Canadians

He made it felt at Versailles before Montcalm had set foot aboard ship, and made it felt in such a way that the instructions to the new commander-in-chief contained an injunction that his plans and contemplated operations should always be first submitted for the approval of the governor-general, who had a royal letter containing this statement: "The Marquis of Montcalm has not command of the regular troops; he can have it only under your authority, and he must be wholly under your orders." The house was divided against itself at the outset, and the result of this is, the assumptions of a governor who preposterously claims every success as his own and lays every failure upon the shoulders of the general, and an acrimonious and bitter contention between the elements of Old and New French which would be contemptible were not its consequences so very serious; for the enemies of Montcalm (who, to judge from this book, at last comprised nearly everybody contained in the word "Canadians") go so far as to insinuate that the fall of Quebec was due to Montcalm prematurely ordering the attack in order to anticipate Vaudreuil, who was hastening up with the rest of the army.

Nor was the French army itself free from dissension. The animosity existing between the French and Canadians, it is true, could not divide the regular army, which was altogether French, but it aggravated the invidious comparison between Montcalm and Lévis already whispered, and favored the enemies of Montcalm in his own camp. It can hardly be said that there was a Montcalm party and a Lévis party among the regular troops, for the cool and selfcontained Lévis would not permit such a dangerous and unmilitary condition; but there undoubtedly existed a coterie, of which it is noticeable that, while Lévis is lauded to the skies, Montcalm is the object of criticism invariably tinged with censoriousness.

The feeling existing between the French and the Canadians at that time manifests itself in the Abbé Casgrain's work to-day. One cannot resist the conviction that it was written for the purpose of setting forth the part played by the Canadians in the best light possible. There cannot be any objection to this; on the contrary, the task is a commendable one, if conscientiously performed. The danger besetting a writer in such a case is that of sinking the historian in the advocate; but, that offense avoided, no offering to Clio could be more pleasing. We know that, upon our side, the same jealousy between the regulars and the militia existed, the same disdain of the provincial by the European. With us, too, this feeling left its mark upon history in Braddock's and Abercrombie's defeats, and in the reluctance of different colonies to forward men and supplies, and was recalled with such bitterness, half a generation later, that it cannot be overlooked in assigning active motives for our revolt. There is a complete historical parallel in the cases of the Americans and the Canadians. The Europeans landed with a consciousness of superiority, which, on being met by resentment, manifested itself in disdain. There was the same contempt of the regulars for the provincial way of fighting, and the same refusal to recognize in it the mode adapted to a country where there was no cavalry, field artillery, or baggage trains, nor any chance of using them if they existed. The results were the same: the French incurred Dieskau's defeat and the fall of Quebec, where those who escaped from the field did so under cover of the despised Canadians; and the British met with Braddock's defeat, where those who regained Fort Cumberland did so under the protection of the slighted provincials. The work of the Abbé Casgrain clearly reveals the progress of this jealousy in the cabinet and in the field, until it culminates in irretrievable disaster to the cause which

brought the discordant elements into conjunction.

We cannot, however, yield our entire sympathy to the unintermitting attempts to attribute every success to the Canadians, and every failure to the French. We are willing to admit much; but Oswego was taken by French skill, Fort William Henry was reduced by French skill; Abercrombie was repulsed by French valor, and the victory of Ste. Foy was shared by the French with the Canadians, and was achieved under a French leader. The Canadians, in fact, throughout this war, never took a principal part, except in the affair of the Monongahela; they figured only in subordinate parts or in minor warfare, and in these they gained the respect neither of their auxiliaries nor of their foes. Where there was one Beaujeu there were a hundred La Cornes. A long and eventful war, during which their country was at stake, produced not a single man among them much above mediocrity; not a single poet uttered a lament over Canada's downfall, nor was there an annalist to record the bravery of his countrymen. Not until the mists of a century had hidden what they did not magnify did a historian arise to tell of their deeds.

Other important features of this work are to be found in the effects of the famine, and the glimpses of social life among the higher classes during the sway of Bigot. An undertone of anti-Montcalmism runs from cover to cover. It would have been well, perhaps, to dwell more emphatically and in detail upon the growing indifference of the court towards Canada, indifference which culminated in the sneer of Voltaire. It would have been better (and it would have been a mere recognition of humanity) had the author forborne to quote, and to adopt as expressive of his own sentiment, the unutterably mean observations in which Lévis shifts the blame of the Fort William Henry butchery upon the butchered. He could learn a lesson in this respect from the Abbé Gabriel. Whatever the shortcomings of Montcalm and whatever the performance of his lieutenant, the world has not taken Lévis to its bosom as it has Montcalm, and it will require more than one work like Montcalm et Lévis to effect a change now in its regard. As far as the Abbé Casgrain's work is concerned, the question whether the true history of Canada has been written in the French language seems still to remain an open

one.

Poetry and the Drama. Poems of Sidney Lanier, edited by his Wife; with a Memorial by William Hayes Ward. (Scribners.) A new edition, though there is no intimation how far the book is an advance upon the edition published in 1884. As a collection of Lanier's verse, however, it cannot fail to find its place. It is to be feared that the place will not be in a general popular regard, for the appeal which Lanier makes, with all his fervor, is to a somewhat small class, first of students of poetry, curious in the technique, and then of

those who, with the quick sympathy of youth, are attracted by the passionate struggle for full utterance which marks much of this poetry. It is rare that one can say, Here is the mastery of poetic expression, but often one can be aware of a strong spirit imprisoned by words. — Is condensation so prime a requisite in literary art that our instinctive criticism of much current verse lies in this direction? Here is The HighTop Sweeting, and Other Poems, by Elizabeth Akers. (Scribners.) The poems are marked by pure sentiment and genuine