considerations of which
we have spoken--the truest piety and the most burning zeal. Of these
influences they were conscious; but we shall perhaps not do the
character injustice if we add another spur to action, of which they were
_not_ conscious. There is a vein of romance in the French composition; a
love of adventure for the sake of the adventure itself, which, when not
tamed or directed, makes a Frenchman fitful, erratic, and unreliable.
When it is toned by personal ambition, it becomes a sort of Paladin
contempt for danger; sometimes a crazy furor. When accompanied by
powerful intellect, and strengthened by concentration on a purpose, it
makes a great commander--great for the quickness of his comprehension,
the suddenness of his resolutions, the rapidity of their execution. When
humanized by love, and quickened by religious zeal, it is purified of
every selfish thought, and produces the chivalrous missionary, whom
neither fire nor flood, neither desert nor pathless wilderness, shall
deter from obeying the command of Him who sent his gospel "unto every
creature." And thus are even those traits, which so often curse the
world with insane ambition and sanguinary war, turned by the power of a
true benevolence to be blessings of incalculable value.

Such were the purposes, such the motives, of this band of noble men; and
whatever may have been their errors, we must at least accord them the
virtues of _sincerity_, _courage_, _and self-denial_. But let us look a
little more closely at the means by which they accomplished undertakings
which, to any other race of men, would have been not only impracticable,
but utterly desperate. Take again, as the representative of his class,
the case of Father Marquette, than whom, obscure as his name is in the
wastes of history, no man ever lived a more instructive and exemplary
life.

From the year 1668 to 1671,[60] Marquette had been preaching at the
Sault de Sainte Marie, a little below the foot of Lake Superior. He was
associated with others in that mission; but the largest type, though it
thrust itself no higher than the smallest, will make the broadest
impress on the page of history; and even in the meager record of that
time, we may trace the influence of his gentle but firm spirit--those by
whom he was accompanied evidently took their tone from him. But he was
one of the Church's pioneers; that class whose eager, single-hearted
zeal is always pushing forward to new conquests of t