and priest armed but with the Cross, carrying the bread of life to the pagan enemy, the coureur de bois more Indian than the Indian, the hunter and trapper, the courtly Governor and Council, garbed in the silken raiment and graced with all the courtliness of the ancien régime, the Seigneur with his mediæval rights and privileges and the sturdy habitant, descendant of Norman peasant but with the best blood of Europe in his veins—not blue blood, indeed, but rich red blood, making and sustaining a man to be depended upon in every contingency.
Nor may I speak of those further East, in "Acadie, home of the happy," of those
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven,"
living in seeming a life all idle and dully prosaic, yet looked at by eye of the poet so full of the truest of romance, there in that "forest primeval," where
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices, sad and prophetic—
Stand like harpers hoar with beards that rest on their bosoms,"
while
14
