EPITAPH Hic Jacet Utroque In Orbe Aeternum Victurus, LUDOVICUS JOSEPHUS DE MONTCALM GOZON Marchio Sancti Verani, Baro Gabriaci, Ordinis Sancti

Ludovici Commendator, Legatus Generalis Exercituum Gallicorum Egregius et Civis et Miles, Nullius rei appetens praeterquam verae laudis Ingenio felici et

Literis exculto Omnes Militiae gradus per continua decora emensus, Omnium Belli Artium, temporum, discriminum gnarus, In Italia, in Bohemia, in Germania Dux industrius Mandata sibi ita semper gerens ut majoribus par haberetur, Jam clarus periculis Ad tutandam Canadensem Provinciam missu Parva militum manu Hostium copias non semel repulit, Propugnacula cepit viris armisque instructissima Algoris, mediae, vigiliarum, laboris patiens, Suis ucice prospiciens immemor sui, Hostis acer, victor mansuetus Fortunam virtute, virium inopiam peritia et celeritate compensavit, Imminens Coloniae fatum et consilio et manu per quadriennium sustinuit Tandem ingentem Exercitum Duce strenuo et audaci, Classemque omni bellorum mole gravem, Mulitiplici prudentia diu ludificatus Vi pertractus ad dimicandum, In prima acie, in primo conflictu vulneratus, Religioni quam semper coluerat innitens, Magno suoram desiderio, nec sine hostium moerore, Extinctus est Die XIV. Sept, A. D. MDCCLIX. aetat. XLVIII. Mortales optimi ducis exuvias in excavata humo, Quam globus bellicus decidens dissiliensque defoderat, Galli lugentes deposuerunt, Et generosae hostium fidei commendarunt The Annual Register for 1762.

THE FRENCH REFUGEES OF OXFORD, MASS.

An elegantly printed volume has just issued from the press of Noyes, Snow and Co., Worcester, Mass, from the pen of George F. Daniels, containing a succinct history of one of the earliest Massachusetts towns - the town of Oxford; we think we cannot introduce it to the reader more appropriately, than in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose graceful introduction prefaces the volume.

Oliver Wendell Holmes to George F. Daniels: - "Of all my father's historical studies," says the Autocrat of the Breakfast-table, "none ever interested me so much as his 'Memoir of the French Protestants who settled at Oxford, in 1686,' - all the circumstances connected with that second Colony of Pilgrim-Fathers, are such as to invest it with singular attraction for the student of history, the antiquary, the genealogist. It carries us back to the memories of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, to the generous Edict of Nantes, and the gallant soldier-king, who issued it; to the days of the Grand Monarque, and the cruel act of revocation which drove into exile hundreds of thousands of the best subjects of France - among them the little band which was planted in our Massachusetts half- tamed wilderness. It leads the explorer who loves to linger around the places consecrated by human enterprise, efforts, trials, triumphs, sufferings, to localities still marked with the fading traces of the strangers who, there found a refuge for a few brief years, and then wandered forth to know their homes no more. It tells the lovers of family history where the un-English names which he is constantly meeting with - Bowdoin, Faneuil, Sigourney - found their origin, and under what skies were moulded the type of lineaments, unlike those of Anglo-Saxon parentage, which he finds among certain of his acquaintance, and it may be in his own family or himself. And what romance can be fuller of interest than the story of this hunted handful of Protestants leaving, some of them at an hour's warning, all that was dear to them, and voluntarily wrecking themselves, as it were, on this shore, where the savage and the wolf were waiting ready to dispute possession with the feeble intruders. They came with their untrained skill to a region where trees were to be felled, wild beasts to be slain, the soil to be subdued to furnish them bread, the whole fabric of social order to be established under new conditions. They came from the sunny skies of France to the capricious climate where the summers were fierce and the winters terrible with winds and snows. They left the polished amenities of an old civilization, for the homely ways of rude settlers of another race and language. Their lips, which had shaped themselves to the harmonies of a refined language, which had been used to speaking such names as Rochefort and Beauvoir and Angouleme, had to distort themselves into the utterances of words like Manchaug and Wabquasset and Chaubunagungamang. The short and simple annals of this heroic and gentle company of emigrants are full of trials and troubles, and ended with a bloody catastrophe.

'After Plymouth, I do not think there is any locality in New England more interesting. This little band of French families, [343 ] transported from the shore of the Bay of Biscay to the wilds of our New England interior, reminds me of the isolated group of Magnolias which we find surrounded by the ordinary forest trees of our Massachusetts town of Manchester. It is a surprise to meet with them, and we wonder how they came there, but they glorify the scenery with their tropical flowers, and sweeten it with their fragrance. Such a pleasing surprise is the effect of coming upon this small and transitory abiding-place of the men and women who left their beloved and beautiful land for the sake of their religion. The lines of their fort may become obliterated, 'the perfume of the shrubbery may no longer be perceived but the ground they hallowed by their footsteps is sacred and the air around their old Oxford home is sweet with their memory.'

This exclusiveness in the selection of settlers for Canada, ever since the days of the DeCaens, to render the population homogeneous and prevent religious discord, was extended to Frenchmen, whose only disability, was their faith, and who did not belong to the national Church, and though the colony, more than once was at its last gasp, for want of soldiers and colonists to defend it, it was forbidden ground to the 500,000 industrious Frenchman, whom the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1682, drove to England, Holland and Germany, and the English and Dutch colonies in America. This policy of exclusiveness, was vigorously denounced by the leading historian of Canada, F. X. Garneau, in 1845.

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