bloom and beauty from beneath their pall of snow, Canada had emerged from
its long moral winter, neither paralysed by the chill, nor depressed by
the gloom, but glowing to its inmost heart with warm young life, and
throbbing in every pulse with irrepressible energy and vigour.

Happily for the result of the undertaking Champlain, its guiding spirit,
was eminently qualified for his position. Wise, as energetic;
persevering, as enterprising; brave in reverse, as unassuming in.
success, he laid his plans with consummate prudence and carried them out
with unwavering constancy. Disinterested, honourable and patriotic, he
suffered no secret view of personal advantage to narrow his mind or mar
his usefulness. Looking on his work as the work of God, and therefore
believing implicitly in its final success, he threw his whole heart into
it, devoting to it time, talents, wealth and life, and pursuing it with
a courage that never quailed and a heroism of self-sacrifice that never
faltered. Profoundly religious, his great aim was to establish it on the
solid foundation of faith and piety. For this end, he looked carefully
from the beginning to the moral elements of the little society, and as
far as his control extended, admitted among the early colonists only
persons of irreproachable character. As soon as affairs appeared
sufficiently promising, he invited missioners to the spiritually
destitute land. Four Franciscans answered the appeal, and on the 25th of
June; 1615, to the great joy of the Catholic inhabitants, Mass was
celebrated in Quebec for the first time since the days of Cartier and
Roberval. In 1624, St. Joseph was solemnly chosen Patron of Canada, which
from its birth has claimed devotion to the Holy Family and to St. Anne,
as its devotion by excellence. The following year, the Recollet Fathers
were joined by a little band of Jesuits, who came to fertilize the soil
with martyrs' blood and win for themselves the martyrs' palm. Their
arrival gradually prepared the way for the realization of the pious