to be knit together again. We acknowledged, in entering upon this narration, a conflict between its rehearsal as history and its drapery in romance. But there is no need of admitting this. Amid all the stern or disagreeable aspects of this prose tragedy, there are elements from which poetry may work its richest, fairest, and tenderest wreathings of sentiment, with the human heart to prompt and to respond to its melancholy images of devastated scenes and tortured affections. Evangelines and Gabriels are the representatives of a large fellowship of parted, seeking, and hopelessly saddened sufferers.[1]
The tragedy at Mines and Grand Prè, with its exasperating effect upon the French, might well introduce the series of horrors and catastrophes of the seven years which followed. The incidents of this closing stage of a continuous struggle must be left for summary notice in the next chapter, as belonging more strictly to the general theme of the European colonial relations with the Indians. New actors came into those distressing scenes. The whole power of Great Britain — with competent and incompetent leaders, with councils of various degrees of wisdom and weakness — was engaged in that decisive campaign of a protracted strife of rivalry for supreme sway in the New World. I have already plainly expressed the shock which it gives to our idea of justice in the disposal of the issues on which the honor and destiny of empire depends, that France — after all her heroism of toil, enterprise, and exploration on this continent — should have no heritage here. On those rocky cliffs, those high-raised
- ↑ The next in the series of volumes which Mr. Parkman has promised, as relating to the close of French dominion on this continent, is waited for with much interest. The theme is one which will engage all his talents and rich resources. Especially will his faithful researches add to our accurate knowledge of the tragic story of the removal of the Neutrals from Acadia. It is understood that he has possessed himself of a mass of original documents, which will throw much light upon the intrigues and secret movements of that incident.
