...
America owes him an enduring memory; for in this masculine figure she sees
the pioneer who guided her to her richest heritage." [Footnote: Parkman,
"La Salle," p. 432.]
France had deserved well of that valley had she done nothing more than to
set that rugged, fearless figure in the heart of America, a perpetual foil
to effeminacy and submission to softening luxury, to the arts that seek
merely popularity, to drunkenness and other vices which he combated even
in that wilderness, to sycophancy and demagogy--a perpetual example of the
"vir" and virtue in the noblest sense in which mankind has defined them.
In the grand amphitheatre in the Sorbonne, I witnessed one day in Paris a
celebration of the conquests of the French language in lands outside of
France: conquests in the islands of the West Indies, where La Salle
suffered all but death; in Canada, where he had his first visions; and in
Louisiana, where he perished. Though his name was not spoken, it were a
reason for greater celebration in France that the spirit of such a
Frenchman as La Salle had enduring memory in the severe ideals of manhood
that are for all time to possess the men of that valley to which he guided
the world.
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