LIFE   OP  FATHER  MAEQUETTE.
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years of self study and examination had passed away, he was as is usual with the young Jesuits, employed in teaching or study, and twelve years glided away in the faithful performance of the unostentatious duties assigned him. No sooner, however, was he invested with the sacred character of the priesthood, than his ardent desire to become in all things an imitator of his chosen patron, St. Francis Xavier, induced him to seek a mission in some land that knew not God, that he might labor there to his latest breath, and die unaided and alone.
The province of Champagne in which he was enrolled contained no foreign mission : he was transferred to that of France, and, in 1666, sailed for Canada. On the 20th of September he landed, buoyant with life and health, at Quebec, and amid his brethren awaited the new destination on which his superiors should decide.*
The moment of his arrival was one of deep interest in the religious history of a colony, which had in its early settlement so nobly represented the purest Catholicity, neither hampered by civil jealousy, nor unhearted by the cold and selfish policy of a pagan age. The halcyon days of the Canadian church were passing away, but God had raised up one to guide and guard his church, that is, in fact, his poor and little ones, in the coming struggle with worldliness and policy. This was Francis de Laval, who landed at Quebec in 1659, with the title of bishop of Petrea, and vicar apostolic of New France. Gradually he gathered around him a few secular priests and began to settle the ecclesiastical affairs of the French posts, till then mere missions in the hands of the Jesuits. At the period of Marquette's arrival, he had already begun to see his diocese assume a regular shape, his clergy had increased, his
* Jour. Sup. Jes.