He has fully and sadly
realized, within his own different range, the experience which he so
aptly phrases as endured by his hero, the adventurous and dauntless
Champlain. When that great pioneer, midway in his splendid career, was
planning one of his almost annual voyages hitherward, at one of the most
emergent periods of his enterprise, he was seized on board his vessel in
France with a violent illness, and reduced, as Mr. Parkman says, to that
"most miserable of all conflicts, the battle of the eager spirit against
the treacherous and failing flesh." Mr. Parkman has known well what
these words mean. In his case, as in that of Champlain, it was not from
the burden of years and natural decay, but from the touch of disease in
the period of life's full vigor in its midway course, that mental
activity was restrained. When, besides the inflictions of a racked
nervous system, the author suffered in addition a malady of the eyes,
which limited him, as he says, to intervals of five minutes for reading
or writing, when it did not wholly preclude them, we may well marvel at
what he has accomplished.
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