declares the method of historical composition which he has
adopted. His aim " was, while scrupulously and rigorously
adhering to the truth of facts, to animate them with the life
of the past, and, so far as might be, clothe the skeleton with
flesh. Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more
than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special
facts. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the
life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their
bearings near and remote ; in the character, habits, and man-
ners of those who took part in them. He must be as it were,
a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes. "
In rapid succession following the Pioneers came The Jesuits in 1867, The Discover^/ of the Great West in 1869, The Old Regime in Canada in 1874, Frontenac in 1877, Montcalm and Wolfe in two volumes in 1 884, and A Half Century of Con- flict also in two volumes in 1892.
In addition to these labors, no mean achievement for the most vigorous and unhampered mind, Parkman found time to write a considerable body of magazine articles and re- views, to revise in succession the earlier volumes of the series and in the case of The Discovery of the Great West to reconstruct the work in the light of the abundant mate- rials on La Salle which were inaccessible to him when it was originally written.
A detailed criticism of these works will hardly be expected in this j)lace, yet something may well be said as to their range and distinctive features.
Some of the volumes, owing to the nature of the subject, are rather a collection of detached narratives than a con- nected story. In The Pioneers^ for example, the two main themes are the rivalry of the French and Spaniards for Flor- ida and the explorations of Champlain, but both parts are appropriately introduced by vivid sketches of earlier voyages and explorations such as those of De Soto and Verrazano. To The Jesuits is prefixed a compact monograph on the Algonquin Indians which saves the narratives in the main body of the work from being overloaded with explanatory
