"One of the convincing tests of genius is the choice of a theme, and nogreater felicity can befall it than to find one both familiar and fresh.All the better if tradition, however attenuated, have made it alreadyfriendly with our fancy. In the instinct that led him straight tosubjects that seemed waiting for him so long, Mr. Parkman gave nouncertain proof of his fitness for an adequate treatment ofthem."—James Russell Lowell.

Thegreatest of all American historians was indeed exceptionately fortunatein his choice of a subject. Writing as he did of the colonization ofNorth America from the landing of Champlain, and of the warfare betweenFrance and England for the control of the American continent, his themeis so closely allied to his own countrymen that it must always have aspecial interest for them and for the people of Canada, upon the earlyhistory and settlement of which country he has thrown so much light,and in regard to which he has aroused such great attention.Notwithstanding physical infirmities, he lived to complete his work,and to bring his series of historical narratives down to the year1760, when Canada passed with the death of Montcalm from the hands ofthe French to be ruled by the nation that had fought more than half acentury for its possession.

The remarkable series of histories grouped under the general title of"France and England in North America" may truly be termed thelife work of their gifted author. He was but a youth ofeighteen at Harvard College when he conceived the plan of writing ahistory of the French and Indian Wars, and his vacations at that timewere passed adventurously and in a way which familiarized him withscenes in which the actors in his historical drama had moved. In theyear 1846 he made with a friend his notable journey across thecontinent, to the desert plains and mountains and the Indian campsof the far West. "I went," says the author in the preface to thefourth edition of "The Oregon Trail," "as a student, to preparefor a2literary undertaking of which the plan was already formed. My businesswas observation, and I was willing to pay dearly for the opportunity ofexercising it." He camped among the Sioux Indians, listened toIndian legends, and studied Indian customs, but paid dearly indeed forthe opportunity, for he became through the exposure an invalid for life.

"The Oregon Trail," an autobiographical narrative of the journey, wasfirst published in 1847 in the Knickerbocker Magazine; and four yearslater the author gave to the world his first historical work, "TheConspiracy of Pontiac," pronounced

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