PREFACE.


The chief aim of this book is the perhaps too bold one--_to map out a
future for the Canadian nation_, which has been hitherto drifting
without any plan.

A lesser purpose of it is to make some of the atmosphere of French
Canada understood by those who speak English. The writer hopes to have
done some service to these brothers of ours in using as his hero one of
those lofty characters which their circle has produced more than once.

The book is not a political work. It must by no means be taken for a
Grit diatribe. The writer is an old-fashioned Tory and an old-fashioned
Liberal: all his parties are dead, and he is at present in a universal
Opposition. The party names he uses are, therefore, in any present-day
application, simply typical, and the work is not a political one in any
current sense.

There are those who will say his characters are untrue and impossible.
To these he would answer: Everything here, apart from a few little
inaccuracies, is studied from the life, and you can find item, man and
date for the essential particulars.

A charge of Metaphysics will be advanced also, by a generation not too
willing to think. _Mon ami_, what we give you of that is not very hard.
If you cannot understand it, leave it out or study Emerson. The main
subject of the book cannot be treated otherwise than with an attempt to
ground it deeply.