exercise over the members who compose it. As a whole, she grew upon the
gaze of the world, a signal example of expansive energy; but she has not
been fruitful in those salient and striking forms of character which
often give a dramatic life to the annals of nations far less prosperous.

We turn to New France, and all is reversed. Here was a bold attempt to
crush under the exactions of a grasping hierarchy, to stifle under the
curbs and trappings of a feudal monarchy, a people compassed by
influences of the wildest freedom,--whose schools were the forest and
the sea, whose trade was an armed barter with savages, and whose daily
life a lesson of lawless independence. But this fierce spirit had its
vent. The story of New France is from the first a story of war: of war
--for so her founders believed--with the adversary of mankind
himself; war with savage tribes and potent forest commonwealths; war
with the encroaching powers of Heresy and of England. Her brave,
unthinking people were stamped with the soldier's virtues and the
soldier's faults; and in their leaders were displayed, on a grand and
novel stage, the energies, aspirations, and passions which belong to
hopes vast and vague, ill-restricted powers, and stations of command.

The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate efforts of a
busy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, to gather
competence or wealth. The expansion of New France was the achievement of
a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain
attempt. Long and valiantly her chiefs upheld their cause, leading to
battle a vassal population, warlike as themselves. Borne down by numbers
from without, wasted by corruption from within, New France fell at last;
and out of her fall grew revolutions whose influence to this hour is
felt through every nation of the civilized world.