Mgr. de Laval, while busying himself with the training of his clergy, watched over the instruction of youth.  He protected his schools and his dioceses; at Quebec the Jesuits, and later the seminary, maintained even elementary schools.  If we must believe the Abbe de Latour and other writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the children of the early colonists, skilful in manual labour, showed, nevertheless, great indolence of mind.  “In general,” writes Latour, “Canadian children have intelligence, memory and facility, and they make rapid progress, but the fickleness of their character, a dominant taste for liberty, and their hereditary and natural inclination for physical exercise do not permit them to apply themselves with sufficient perseverance and assiduity to become learned men; satisfied with a certain measure of knowledge sufficient for the ordinary purposes of their occupations (and this is, indeed, usually possessed), we see no people deeply learned in any branch of science.  We must further admit that there are few resources, few books, and little emulation.  No doubt the resources will be multiplied, and clever persons will appear in proportion as the colony increases.”  Always eager to develop all that might serve for the propagation of the faith or the progress of the colony, the devoted prelate eagerly fostered this natural aptitude of the Canadians for the arts and trades, and he established at St. Joachim a boarding-school for country children; this offered, besides a solid primary education, lessons in agriculture and some training for different trades.

Mgr. de Laval gave many other proofs of his enlightened charity for the poor and the waifs of fortune; he approved and encouraged among other works the Brotherhood of Saint Anne at Quebec.  This association of prayer and spiritual aid had been established but three years before his arrival; it was directed by a chaplain and two directors, the latter elected annually by secret ballot.  He had wished to offer in 1660 a more striking proof of his devotion to the Mother of the Holy Virgin, and had caused to be built on the shore of Beaupre the first sanctuary of Saint Anne.  This temple arose not far from a chapel begun two years before, under the care of the Abbe de Queylus.  The origin of this place of devotion, it appears, was a great peril to which certain Breton sailors were exposed:  assailed by a tempest in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, they made a vow to erect, if they escaped death, a chapel to good Saint Anne on the spot where they should land.  Heaven heard their prayers, and they kept their word.  The chapel erected by Mgr. de Laval was a very modest one, but the zealous missionary of Beaupre, the Abbe Morel, then chaplain, was the witness of many acts of ardent faith and sincere piety; the Bishop of Petraea himself made several pilgrimages to the place.  “We confess,” says he, “that nothing has aided