Some years after Champlain’s first expedition, a few Englishmen landed in mid-winter on the coast of Massachusetts, and, without help of kings or nobles, began to grow strong by their own inherent energy and the constant accession to their number of persons dissatisfied at home. It was not so with the French settlements on the St. Lawrence. Champlain was continually returning to France to entreat the King for help; to seek a new patron among the nobles; to compel the merchants to fulfill their compact by sending out a few colonists. No Frenchman was desirous to find a home beyond the sea; all bore in quietness a despotism worse than that from which the more impatient Englishmen had fled. The natural inaptitude of France for the work of colonizing was vividly illustrated in the early history of Canada. [Sidenote: 1629 A.D.] Near the close of Champlain’s life the capital of the State which he had founded was torn away from him. An English ship, commissioned by Charles I. and commanded by a piratical Scotchman, appeared before the great rock of Quebec, and summoned the city to surrender. Champlain, powerless to resist, yielded to fate and gave up his capital. When the conquerors landed to seek the plunder for which they had come, they found a few old muskets and cannon and fifty poorly-fed men. The growth of twenty years had done no more for Quebec than this. The loss of Canada caused no regret in France. There were public men who regarded that loss as in reality a gain, and advised that France should make no effort to regain her troublesome dependency. But Champlain urged upon the Government the great value of the fur trade and fisheries; he showed that the difficulties of the settlement were now overcome, and that progress in the future must be more rapid than in the past; he pled that the savages who were beginning to receive the light of the true faith should not be given over to heretics. [Sidenote: 1632 A.D.] His urgency prevailed; and England, not more solicitous to keep than France was to regain this unappreciated continent, readily consented that it should be restored to its former owners. Three years afterwards Champlain died. He saw nothing of the greatness for which he had prepared the way. The colonists numbered yet only a few hundreds. The feeble existence of the settlement depended upon the good-will of the Englishmen who were their neighbours on the south, and of the fierce savages who lived in the forests around them. But Champlain was able to estimate, in some measure, the results of the work which he had done. He sustained himself to the end with the hope that the Canada which he loved would one day be prosperous and strong--peopled by good Catholics from France, and by savages rescued from destruction by baptism and the exhibition of the cross. * * * * *