desires of Franklin. Ho issued the most abominable order of which political history makes mention.

On the 5th of September, 1655, the bell convoked all the inhabitants of the commune into the church of Port-Royal, which was soon filled with unarmed men. The women waited outside in the cemetery. An English regiment, with fixed bayonets, preceded by their drums, entered the sacred place. After the roll had been beaten, Governor Lawrence mounted the steps of the altar, and read the royal commission, countersigned by Chatham.

"You are convoked," said he, in English, to the Acadians, "by the order of Her Majesty. Her clemency towards you has been great; you know how you have replied to it. The task which I have to accomplish is painful and repugnant to me ; but it is urgent and inevitable; I must fulfil the will of Her Majesty. All your goods, domains, flocks, lands, fisheries, pasturages, houses, and cattle, are, and remain confiscated to the profit of the crown. You are condemned to transportation in the other provinces, according to the good will of the monarch. You are prisoners."

The Acadians were unarmed and defenceless. Could they have foreseen so barbarous and unheard-of a proceeding, they would have called to their aid eight Indian tribes, who were devoted to them, and who would have aided them with arms, or to find an asylum in the great forest. Five days only were given to them. The soldiers commissioned to guard them set fire to their houses, barns, and the church; they barely left some clothing and a little furniture to this agricultural and fishing people. As they found in all the houses signs of idolatry, that is, the cross of the Saviour, and an image of St. Mary the Virgin, Anglican fanaticism urged on by the neighboring Puritans, pushed barbarity to atrocity. Children were separated from their mothers, husbands from their wives.

The despair of the aged, the resistance of the inen, the cries and tears of the women were powerless. "It was," says Mr. Haliburton, "a spectacle more horrible than the sack of Parga, an act, the memory of which is profoundly kept in this part of America, and which not a little contributed to excite republican hatred against the partizans of British royalty."

Yet the movers of this excerable persecution were the patriots, Chatham and Franklin; the instruments of this vengeance upon the Catholics were Presbyterian and Anglican soldiers. Prejudice does not reason.

The condemned departed. Their fair orchards, their French habitations, their enclosures of Norman apple-trees, their rich pastures, the dikes which they had raised to protect their lands from inundation, were abandoned. As the frigates which carried these 15,000 poor Frenchmen away, set sail for Frederickstown, the light of their burning homes was reflected upon. their persons, and reddened the waters of the sea. The last touch was given to this barbarism by setting them ashore, here and there upon the beach, like impure beasts who ought to be lost, the father far from the son, the mother from her child. They found each other again as best they could; none but themselves cared for that; anything was good enough for Frenchmen and Catholics. The amiable Franklin did not raise his voice; the philanthropy of the Quakers was not indignant; Voltaire did not disquiet himself; Boston Puritans, and gentlemen of Versailles had something else to attend to..

These poor heroic Normans, protected by their courage, formed here and there, little groups which prospered, thanks to God! Moral energy and religious perseverance are powerful aids. You can still see the wreck of an Acadian Colony at Saint Domingo, in French Guyana and in Louisiana where

their colonies wore very flourishing. Even at Port-Royal some few obstinately returned, established themselves despite the English, and regained their ancient farms. About twenty embarked for France, and cleared those grey and roscate heaths which hide a fertile soil not far from Châtellerault. In 1820, five chiefs of these Norman-Acadian families, claimed and received from the Chamber of Deputies, a small pension, promised by the National Assembly, and which had ceased to be paid; such good patriots are we, so grateful for grand deeds, sinco talkers govern us, philanthropists enrich us, and advocates reconstitute us every ten years.

You are perhaps astonished that Chatham should have ordered this infamous affair, and that the worthy Franklin should have approved of it. Many incredulous people must resign themselves to historic proofs which are irrefragable; to what end would be the art of writing and thinking if justice were not rendered now and then. Mr. Macaulay, proves in his recent history of England, that the philanthropic William was deep in the corruptions and intrigues of the venal court of Charles II. Penn excused himself doubtless on the ground of good intentions; such is the human race. The Abbé Raynal who looked upon Penn as a god, would have thought Mr. Macaulay. very hardy, for disturbing his admiration.

Events which leave such burning traces in the life of nations, are soon transformed into legends. The Acadians. have a very touching legend of their exile, probably true at bottom, as all legends are; it has been treated with talent by Longfellow, who has rather over ornamented this rustic and ingcuuous story. The misfortune of Madame Cottin may some day overtake him. She covered with agreeable and tasteful ornaments an interesting Russian tradition: M. Xavier de Maistre destroyed the ornaments, took up the subject afresh, and told the simple history of the Exiles of Siberia; told it so well and

so simply, that his narration, a chef-d'ruvre of our languago, has caused the book of Madame Cottin to be forgotten.

SECTION II.

MR. LONGFELLOW'S POEM.

The Acadians relate, that a young girl of Port-Royal, affianced the night before the order of Chatham arrived, and sent on board another frigate than that which carried her betrothed and her family, was set ashore upon the coasts of Pennsylvania, far from her kindred and friends; an old Catholic priest disembarked with her, and aided her by his councils and cares. They crossed together Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine, in hopes of finding the father and the betrothed -they were now and then helped by some good Catholic souls, and at last, at the mouth of the Wabash, discovered a fragment of their old colony.

Going on board the boat which carried the wrecks of their people, they descended the great Mississippi. It was the month of May. The boat, rowed by Acadian oarsmen, followed the yellow current, and bore the troop of exiles, poor beings who had lost their country, their kin, their fair prairies of Opelousas, and their beloved homes. They were seeking their dispersed families, and for many days, floating down. those dangerous waters, they travelled through the solitudes of the profound forest. At night they kindled a fire and encamped upon the shore. Sometimes they encountered a rapid, and their bark shot on like an arrow; sometimes they glided into a lagoon, amid green isles covered with cotton, and the white pelican stalked beside them.

Soon a vast horizon was discovered. the landscape grew flat; they saw the white houses of the planters, the huts of the negroes and the dove-cotes. The majestic river curved towards the Orient, and the boat entered the bayou of Plaquemine. Thero all changes; the wandering waters spread above the clay soil like a vast coat of mail-the cypresses along the bank droop in mournful arches above them; their gloomy boughs covered with eternal moss the black banners and draperies of nature's cathedral. No sound, save where from time to time is heard the measured plash of the heron's foot, or the cry of the screech owl. The cedar and the cypress colonnades are blanched by the irregular gleam of the moonlight upon the waters; all is vague, strange, pleasant as a dream.

Evangeline is sad, says the poet, with

-Strange forebodings of ill, unseen and that cannot be compassed. As at the tramp of a horse's hoof on the turf of the prairies Far in advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking mimosa,

So at the hoof beats of fate, with sad forebodings of evil

Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke of doom has attained it.”

The Voyage of the young girl to Louisiana is told with a really admirable truth and sentiment of nature. Yet it is spoiled by many affectations and the faded tints of which we have already spoken. A more consummate artist would have avoided big words, and touches of trivial melancholy, thorns of existence, desert of life, and particularly the moonlight reverics. Still the sentiment, the invention, the movement are true, powerful, and new. What a delicious picture is that of the young girl asleep with her head upon the knee of the old priest, while the rowers sing an old French chant, and strike in cadence the waters of the Mississippi. "Alas, father," says Evangeline, "my love is lost;" and the old priest said: