16 quotes
France built its best colony on a principle of exclusion, and failed; England reversed the system, and succeeded.
Montcalm and Wolfe (1884)
A happier calamity never befell a people than the conquest of Canada by the British arms.
The Old Régime in Canada (1874)
America was still a land of wonder. The ancient spell still hung unbroken over the wild, vast world of mystery beyond the sea,—a land of romance, adventure, and gold.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)
Humanity, morality, decency, might be forgotten, but codfish must still be had for the use of the faithful in Lent and on fast days.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)
The Revolution began at the top,—in the world of fashion, birth, and intellect,—and propagated itself downwards.
Montcalm and Wolfe (1884)
Versailles was a gulf into which the labor of France poured its earnings; and it was never full.
Montcalm and Wolfe (1884)
The lot of the favored guest of an Indian camp or village is idleness without repose, for he is never left alone, with the repletion of incessant and inevitable feasts.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)
In the middle of the sixteenth century, Spain was the incubus of Europe. Gloomy and portentous, she chilled the world with her baneful shadow.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)
The most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this continent was: Shall France remain here, or shall she not?
Montcalm and Wolfe (1884)
His [Champlain's] books mark the man,—all for his theme and his purpose, nothing for himself. Crude in style, full of the superficial errors of carelessness and haste, rarely diffuse, often brief to a fault, they bear on every page the palpable impress of truth.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)
Art, industry, and commerce, so long crushed and overborne, were stirring into renewed life, and a crowd of adventurous men, nurtured in war and incapable of repose, must seek employment for their restless energies in fields of peaceful enterprise.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)
If any pale student, glued to his desk, here seek an apology for a way of life whose natural fruits is that pallid and emasculate scholarship of which New England has had too many examples, it will be far better that this sketch had not been written. For the student there is, in its season, no better place than the saddle, and no better companion than the rifle or the oar.
Autobiography (1868)
Evil reports of a churlish wilderness, a pitiless climate, disease, misery, and death, had heralded the arrival of De Monts. The outlay had been great, the returns small; and when he reached Paris, he found his friends cold, his enemies active and keen.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)
Mistress of the Indies, Spain swarmed with beggars. Yet, verging to decay, she had an ominous and appalling strength. Her condition was that of an athletic man penetrated with disease, which had not yet unstrung the thews and sinews formed in his days of vigor.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)
In one point the plan was fatally defective, since it involved the deadly enmity of a race whose character and whose power were as yet but ill understood,--the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and most ambitious savages to whom the American forest has ever given birth.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)
A true hero, after the chivalrous mediaeval type, his [Champlain's] character was dashed largely with the spirit of romance. Though earnest, sagacious, and penetrating, he leaned to the marvellous; and the faith which was the life of his hard career was somewhat prone to overstep the bounds of reason and invade the domain of fancy.
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)