nd sciences, which made him equal to every undertaking, and his
untiring energy, which enabled him to surmount every obstacle, would
have won at last a glorious success for his grand enterprise, had not
all his fine qualities been counterbalanced by a haughtiness of manner
which often made him unsupportable, and by a harshness toward those
under his command which drew upon him an implacable hatred, and was at
last the cause of his death."

The enthusiasm of the disinterested and chivalrous Champlain was not
the enthusiasm of La Salle, nor had he any part in the self-devoted
zeal of the early Jesuit explorers. He belonged not to the age of the
knight-errant and the saint, but to the modern world of practical
study and practical action. He was the hero, not of a principle nor of
a faith, but simply of a fixt idea and a determined purpose. As often
happens with concentered and energetic natures, his purpose was to him
a passion and an inspiration; and he clung to it with a certain
fanaticism of devotion. It was the offspring of an ambition vast and
comprehensive, yet acting in the interest both of France and of
civilization.

Serious in all things, incapable of the lighter pleasures, incapable
of repose, finding no joy but in the pursuit of great designs, too shy
for society and too reserved for popularity, often unsympathetic and
always seeming so, smothering emotions which he could not utter,
schooled to universal distrust, stern to his followers and pitiless to
himself, bearing the brunt of every hardship and every danger,
demanding of others an equal constancy joined to an implicit
deference, heeding no counsel but his own, attempting the impossible
and grasping at what was too vast to hold--he contained in his own
complex and painful nature the chief springs of his triumphs, his
failures, and his death.

It is easy to reckon up his defects, but it is not easy to hide from
sight the Roman virtues that redeemed them. Beset by a throng of
enemies, he stands, like the King of Israel, head and shoulders above
them all. He was a tower of adamant, against whose impregnable front
hardship and danger, the rage of man and of the elements, the southern
sun, the northern blast, fatigue, famine, and disease, delay,
disappointment, and deferred hope emptied their quivers in vain. That
very pride which, Coriolanus-like, declared itself most sternly in the
thickest press of foes, has in it something to challenge admiration.
Never