MAKERS OF CANADA.
In the series "Makers of Canada" (T. C. and E. C. Jack ; by subscription, 20 vols. at 21s. net each) we have Count Prontenae, by William Dawson Le Sneur, and Bishop Laval, by Leblond de Brumath. Count Frontenac, after a somewhat stormy youth and manhood—he was overwhelmed with debt and had a permanent quarrel with his wife from quits early days of their marriage—became Governor of Canada in 1672, when he was in his fifty-third year. Eleven years afterwards he was recalled, after sundry disagreements with the home authorities. After something less than six years at home, he was reappointed. His second term of office lasted for the rest of his life, for he died in harness on November 28th, 1698, when he had entered on his seventy-ninth year. The Life of Bishop Laval gives, so to speak, the other side of the picture. He was born in 1622, and so was a younger contemporary of the Governor. He preceded him in Canada by some years, for he went out as Vicar Apostolic—the country was not ready, it was thought, to be regularly constituted a diocese—in 1658. He became Bishop of Quebec in 1674, and, with occasional absences, held the office for thirty-four years. He was not always on the best of terms with the Governor. Frontenac had a very high estimate of his own position, and was quite ready to repeat, with a .smaller reference, his master's "L'etat c'est moi"; and he was a Jansenist, a 'circumstance on which his clever adversaries did not fail to insist. On one point of difference we are naturally inclined to side with the Bishop. This was the liquor traffic with the Indians, a commerce which the Bishop was disposed to prohibit altogether. M. Le Sueur maintains that this was impossible, and it certainly is not for us to pronounce an opinion. However this may be, the two volumes should be read together. Combined they give a good notion of New France as it was in the later decades of the seven- teenth century.
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