FRANCIS PARKMAN 1823-1893 Francis Parkman was born at Boston in 1823. His family were people of wealth and education, and thus he was from childhood surrounded by influences favorable to a scholarly development. His health, however, was far from strong, and for several years during his boyhood he lived in the Middlesex Fells, a wild tract not far from the city, hunting, fishing, living a real frontier existence. From time to time he set out on extensive expeditions, roaming through the Maine woods and the region about Lake George and Lake Champlain, localities abounding in historical interest. Already he had determined to devote his life to telling the story of the great struggle between the English colonists and the French and Indians. Soon after graduating from Harvard College in 1844 Parkman set out for the far distant Black Hills, where he shared the hardships and privations incident to life among the Indians, with a view to learning their manner of living and thinking. His constitution, unfortunately, was ill adapted to this rough life, and his health broke down completely. On his return home he was too feeble to write, but dictated an account of his experiences which, after being printed in a magazine, was published in a volume entitled "The California and Oregon Trail." This book was published in 1849. Two years later appeared the first volume of the great historical work that had already shaped itself in Parkman's mind. This was the "History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac." Chronologically this should have been the last volume in the series. Parkman, however, appears to have written it first, as the material for it was most vivid in his memory, and probably he was in the mood best adapted for that portion of his work. The physical difficulties under which he labored were always great, and at times almost insupportable. There were times when he could read only at intervals, times when he could not read at all. The bulk of the work had to be done for him by an amanuensis, and many of the authorities had to be read to him, as he was unable to read them himself. Under these depressing circumstances his courage never faltered, and steadily one by one the volumes of his great history were issued from the press. Pioneers of France in the New World," in chronological order the first of the series, was published in 1865; then at intervals of two years came "The Jesuits in North America" and "La Salle, and the Discovery of the Great West." Other volumes followed at intervals of from three to five years until 1892, when the great task was completed. The following year Mr. Parkman died, at the age of seventy, while still engaged in revising his earlier volumes, and happy in the consciousness that the task he had set out to accomplish more than fifty years before was done. 66 In his chosen field Parkman has no rivals, and his work is likely to remain, for a long time, the standard authority on the period of which it treats. His style is vivid and pleasing, displaying great descriptive powers and skill in narrating the stirring events and romantic incidents of his history. Of Parkman's other writings, which are few, his essay on James Fenimore Cooper" is one of the most interesting. Here Parkman records some of his impressions of the man who has given us such a vivid portrayal of the North American Indian. 66 N° JAMES FENIMORE COOPER O American writer has been so extensively read as James Fenimore Cooper. His novels have been translated into nearly every European language. Nay, we are told-but hardly know how to believe it-that they may be had duly rendered into Persian at the bazaars of Ispahan. We have seen some of them well thumbed and worn at a little village in a remote mountainous district of Sicily; and in Naples and Milan the bookstalls bear witness that "L'Ultimo dei Mohecanni" is still a popular work. In England these American novels have been eagerly read and transformed into popular dramas; while cheap and often stupidly mutilated editions of them have been circulated through all her colonies, garrisons, and naval stations, from New Zealand to Canada. Nor is this widely-spread popularity undeserved. Of all American writers Cooper is the most original, the most thoroughly national. His genius drew aliment from the soil where God had planted it, and rose to a vigorous growth, rough and gnarled, but strong as a mountain cedar. His volumes are a faithful mirror of that rude transatlantic nature which to European eyes appears so strange and new. The sea and the forest have been the scenes of his countrymen's most conspicuous achievements; and it is on the sea and in the forest that Cooper is most thoroughly at home. Their spirit inspired him, their images were graven on his heart; and the men whom their embrace has nurtured, the sailor, the hunter, the pioneer, move and act upon his pages with all the truth and energy of real life. There is one great writer with whom Cooper has been often compared, and the comparison is not void of justice; for though, on the whole, far inferior, there are certain high points of literary excellence in regard to which he may contest the palm with Sir Walter Scott. It is true that he has no claim to share the humor and pathos, the fine perception of beauty and delicacy in character, which add such charms to the romances of Scott. Nor can he boast that compass and variety of power which could deal alike with forms of humanity so diverse; which could portray with equal mastery the Templar Bois Guilbert, and the Jewess Rebecca; the manly heart of Henry Morton, and the gentle heroism of Jeanie Deans. But notwithstanding this unquestioned inferiority on the part of Cooper, there were marked affinities between him and his great contemporary. Both were practical men, able and willing to grapple with the hard realities of life. Either might have learned with ease to lead a regiment, or command a line-of-battle ship. Their conceptions of character were no mere abstract ideas, or unsubstantial images, but solid embodiments in living flesh and blood. Bulwer and Hawthorne -the conjunction may excite a smile-are writers of a different stamp. Their conceptions are often exhibited with consummate skill, and, in one of these examples at least, with admirable truthfulness; but they never cheat us into a belief in their reality. We may marvel at the skill of the artist, but we are prone to regard his creations rather as figments of art than as reproductions of nature-as a series of vivified and animate pictures, rather than as breathing men and women. With Scott and with Cooper it is far otherwise. Dominie Sampson and the antiquary are as distinct and familiar to our minds as some eccentric acquaintance of our childhood. If we met Long Tom Coffin on the wharf at New Bedford, we should wonder where we had before seen that familiar face and figure. The tall, gaunt form of Leatherstocking, the weather-beaten face, the bony hand, the cap of fox-skin, and the old hunting-frock, polished with long service, seem so palpable and real, that in some moods of mind one may easily confound them with the memories of his own experiences. Others have been gifted to conceive the elements of far loftier character, and even to combine these in a manner equally truthful; but few have rivalled Cooper in the power of breathing into his creations the breath of life, and turning the phantoms of his brain into seeming realities. It is to this, in no small measure, that he owes his widely |