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Lorsque le document est trop grand pour Atre reproduit en un seul clichA, il est filmA A partir de Tangle supArieur gauche, de geuche A droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images nAcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mAthode. y errata Id to nx fie pelure, 9on A n 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 "*0 b\3 - '■ ' i.i: THE Canadian Monthly AND NATIONAL REVIEW. Vol. 7.] FEBRUARY, 1875. [No. 2. WOLFE AND OLD QUEBEC. BY DANIEL WILSON, LL.D. li AMONG the thousands who yearly en- ter the St. Lawrence, and for the first time gaze on its noble landscape, few can fail to be impressed with the quaint pic- turesqueness of the ancient capital, enthron- ed amid its fine amphitheatre of hills, and crowned with the embattled heights of Cape Diamond. The landscape is one upon which the dullest eye can scarcely gaze un- moved ; and presented, as it so often is, to the ocean-tossed emigrant, in search of a home in the wilderness, its beauty is like the first gleam of sunshine on a land of pro- mise. But Quebec has other charms, in which it has no rival on this continent. It greets the voyager from the old world with proud historic memories, linking Cape Dia- mond and the heights of Abraham with the triumphs of the great Frederick, and the discomfiture of Louis XV ; with the states- manship of Chatham, the gallant rivalry of Wolfe and Montcalm, and all the old me- mories of the Seven Years' War. Time has in store for our young Dominion a future which, we doubt not, will make for it many historic scenes, but no change can rob that landscape of its grand memories, or divorce the name of Wolfe from the em- battled heights which are the monuments of his fame. Nevertheless, while, next after England's greatest leaders in arms, — her Marlborough and Wellington, her Blake and Nelson, — none claims a more honoured place than Wolfe, no biography worthy of him has been written ; and his name lives only in the memory of younger generations associated with that life-bought triumph which gave a new bias to the destinies of this continent. Southey, to whom we owe the life of Nelson, contemplated writing that of Wolfe ; Gleig has published selections from his letters ; and Earl Stanhope has turned others of them to account in his " History of England ; " but no adequate review of his personal life has yet been writ ten ; and the blaze of triumph in which it closed seems to have obscured all other incidents of his brief career. But that to6 THE CANADIAN MONTHLY. career has a peculiar interest for Canadians, if indeed it may not be regarded as an episode in the history of the Dominion. The fami'y from which General Wolfe sprang played a prominent part among the royalists of Ireland in the era of the Com- monwealth. On the capitulation of Lime- rick, in October, 165 1, to the Parliamentary General, Ireton, twenty of the most distin- guished among its defenders were excepted from pardon, including George Woulfe, a mi- litary officer, and his brother, Francis, a friar. The friar was hanged, but his brother made his escape to England, settled in Yorkshire, and there, in due time, a grandson was born, who rose to the rank of Lieut.-General in the reign of Queen Anne, distinguished himself in the campaigns of Marlborough, and did good service in the cause of the new Hanoverian dynasty, in 1715, against the Jacobite descendants of those with whom his Irish ancestry had staked their lives on behalf of a Stuart King. As Colonel, he commanded the 8th Regiment of Foot ; and this regiment his son, James, — the future victor of Quebec, — entered in 1 741, at the age of fifteen. Some quarter of a century ago an old gentleman died in Glasgow, in whose pos- session an antique military-chest had remain- ed for upwards of fifty years. The key had been broken in the rusty lock ; and so its contents lay undisturbed, till the executor of its custodian, in the administration of his estate, forced the lock, and disclosed a con- fused heap of regimental papers, reports, and old letters. For the most part they recalled mere formalities of the old military days of pipe-clay and pig-tails. But one bundle, carefully filed apart, proved to con- sist of thirteen letters written by Wolfe to a brother officer. They extend over a period of nine years, from Wolfe's twenty-second to his thirty-first year, and not only supply interesting glimpses of his earfy military life, but admit us to the confidence of the young soldier in far more tender strifes of the heart. Wolfe was stationed with his regiment at Glasgow when he addressed the first of these letters, in all the frankness of youthful friendship, to Captain Rickson, then with his regiment at Dublin. He communicates welcome intelligence about a lady to whom the Captain has evidently lost his heart, and assures him that she is every way worthy of his regard. He then whispers, in strictest confidence, of a fair maiden, known to both , who has won all his own affections ; a lady of great sweetness of temper, good sense, and most engaging behaviour — as to lovers' eyes young ladies are wont to appear. But " the course of true love never did run smooth." A guardian uncle of the young lady finds his youth an insuperable objection ; for, as he himself admits, he is " but twenty-two and three months." The General and Mrs. Wolfe, moreover, have still graver objections to the match ; Mrs. Wolfe having her eye, as clever matchmaking mothers will have, on a matrimonial prize of ;^3o,ooo for their only son. He adds, however, that if he gets expected promotion, he will certainly pop the question before the year is out, in spite of prudent uncles and mammas. " But," he concludes, " if I am kept long here the fire will be extinguished. Young flames must be constantly fed, or they'll evapo- rate 1" And so, with this rather confused lover's metaphor, the subject drops out of sight, and the lady is heard of no more, having, probably, accepted the hand of " a very rich knight," concerning whom Wolfe indulges in sundry contemptuous allusions, as a rival whom he holds exceedingly cheap. The tongue is an unruly member, but it is nothing to the tell-tale pen which thus blabs old lovers' confidences a hundred years after their hearts are dust. It was, in truth, a mere play of fancy, in which the heart of neither can have been deeply touched. Ere long a more genuine passion mingled its tenderness with his latest dream of glory and of duty. But the same leaer touches on other themes. Such schooling as Wolfe «iji {* v> • ■ WOLFE AND OLD QUEBEC. 107 % J \v had, in those old days, before Woolwich Boards or Civil Service Examinations were dreamt of, was obtained in his native Wes- terham, a pretty little Kentish Town, on the river Dart. But he left school to join his father's regiment, at the age of fifteen ; and in writing to his friend he deplores his deficient education, with later years running to waste in a Scottish barrack, " where," he says, "your barren battalion conversation rather blunts the faculty than improves." But his was not the mind to rest contented with mere grumbling over opportunities lost. Already he had attracted notice by his ap- titude for command ; introducing the great- est regularity and exactness of discipline, and yet retaining the affection of his men. He was applying himself with unwearied assiduity to the mastery of his profession ; and, ainid the distractions and impediments of barrack life, was silently preparing himself in all ways for his great life-work. " You know," he writes, " I am but a very indiflfer- ent scholar. When a man leaves school at fifteen, he will never be justly called a man of letters. I am endeavouring to repair the damage of my education ; and have a person to teach me Latin and the mathematics, two hours each day, for four or five months. This may help me a little." Thus modestly does the young soldier tell of time redeemed from the idleness of barrack life, to recover lost opportunities of earlier years. But the glimpses thus caught of Wolfe, as a lover and a student, are episodes of a quiet interval between his earlier and later campaigns. Walpole, the sagacious minister of the first two Georges, to whose pacific policy the stability of their throne was mainly due, had been driven from power just as Wolfe entered the army. King George, with obstinate Hanoverian policies of his own, had no difficulty in enlisting England in a quarrel about the pragmatic sanction, p.nd the Queen of Hungary's right to the Austrian Throne. There were then, as then? ever have been, short-sighted Eng- lishmen who thought it high-spirited and heroic to bear the brunt of every dynastic squabble ; and were of the same opinion as has been so recently set forth anew, that it is a cowardly thing, if bloody noses are going in any corner of " Dame Eutopa's School," that we should not thrust our own into the strife. So there were fine chances for those who chose the profession of arms. Young Wolfe had no sooner done so, than he embarked with his father for Flanders, and began the practical study of war ; the same year in which Frederick the Great made that world-famous seizure of Silesia : the first of Pinssia's German acquisitions, on which she has since kept tenacious hold. England now became the fast ally of Aus- tria, subsidised Denmark and Sweden ; and, indeed, squandered money so lavishly in a quarrel with which she had absolutely no- thing to do, that her national debt has kept up a very practical remembrance of it ever since. Still more to give hostages to for- tune, her King served as actual soldier in the same ranks in which Wolfe did duty as subaltern. Nor was it any royal holiday work, or theatrical "baptism of fire." At the bloody battle of Dettingen, King George, with stolid coolness, led the cavalry to the onset ; and when dismounted, put himself at the head of his own British and Hano- erian infantry, which broke and scattered the Duke de Grammont's ranks, and won the day. In this fierce struggle. Ensign Wolfe carried the colours of his regiment, and shared in the dangers and honour of the victory — the last in which a King of Eng- land bore part. Ere long, on the disastrous field of Fontenoy, Wolfe distinguished him- self when others failed, and received the special thanks of the Commander-in-Chief. One hundred and thirty years ago that war of the Ai'rfrian succession occupied all minds as eagerly as the late Franco-German struggle did our own. To our great grand- fathers it seemed world-famous and unfon< getable. To the very historian now it has io8 THE CANADIAN MONTHLY. become obscure. Carlyle, in his sardonic vein, exclaims : " Of Philippi and Arbela, educated Englishmen can render account ; and I am told young gentlemen entering the army are pointedly required to say who com- manded at ^gos-Potami, and wrecked the Peloponnesian war; but of Dettingen aid Fontenoy, where is the living Englishr.ian that has the least notion, or seeks for any?"* Yet that war had other home-fruits for Eng- land besides her national debt, which live in all men's memories. The sagacious foresight of Walpole had anticipated from the first the dangers '• hich now beset the new dynasty. France, foiled by England's antagonism, revived its long- smouldering schemes of revolution, which many a fine Jacobite ballad helped to fan into flame ; and soon the nation was involved in civil war. Fontenoy was fought on the 31st of May, 1745. Before the end of July, Prince Charles Edward was in Scot- land ; and soon the Highlands were in arms on behalf of the exiled Stuarts. The Eng- lish regiments were hastily recalled from Flanders ; and among them that in which Wolfe now held brevet rank of major, as the reward of his deeds in the continental cam- paign. Landing at the Tyne, the returned regiments, under command of General Haw- ley, were marched against the rebels, only to partake in his ignominious defeat at Fal- kirk. Surprised and panic-stricken, his broken battalions fled before the onset of the Highland clansmen. Three regiments only stood their ground, where veterans fresh from Dettingen quailed before the half- armed and undisciplined mountaineers ; one, a body of six hundred Glasgow militia, com- manded by the Earl of Home ; another, the regiment in which Wolfe led his company, and held the ground with resolute cool- • It is an interesting illustrition of the service Art renders at times to history, that tht; fame of Dettin- gen is quite familiar to musical circles in England, from the "Te Deum" composed by Handel in cele- bration I of that event — a fact vyhich seems to have escaped Carlyle.— Ea C. M. ness and intrepidity. It was a crisis in the history of England. Surprise and defeat had also scattered the royal forces at Preston- Pans ; and in the iclat of princely courte- sies, and the charm of revived national asso- ciations, Edinburgh, for a brief time, forgot the dragonnades of Charles II., and the boots and thumbkins of his more infamous brother. But it was the last gleam of sunshine in a wintry day. Nearly three months after General Hawley's defeat at Falkirk, on the memorable -eth of April, 1746, the Duke of Cumberland commanded the royal forces on Culloden Moor. The gloomy dawn of that April morning, with its drizzling rain drenching the famished clansmen, haunts the mind, as though nature herself wept over the tragic scene. In truth it is a theme in which our judgment and our feel- ings are at war ; and we are apt, even now, to forget, in the romantic associations of the Prince Charles of Scottish song, the real issues of a contest which established the hard-won liberties of the nation against a royal race for whom even adversity yielded no sweet uses or wise lessons. In that memorable battle, where the Duke of Cumberland won the unenviable title of " The Butcher" Wolfe acted as aide-de-camp to General Hawley, who, with nis cavalry, protected the lines of infantry on the flanks. It is needless to dwell on a strug- gle in which all the chivalry and heroism were on the side of the vanquished. Cum- berland, though by no means prompt in pursuit, revenged himself by the butchery of the wounded or, the field ; and even yet. more than a century and a quarter after that bloody day, the name of the victor is re- called with abhorrence. One incident asso- ciated with such unheroic deeds, connects Wolfe with the events of the day. As the Duke rode over the deserted ground, with the young aide-de-camp in his train, the colonel of the Erasers — a youth who had fallen at the head of his clansmen, — raised himself with an effort, to gaze in the face of t i 4 WOLFE AND OLD QUEBEC. 109 ^ the victor. " Shoot me that Highland scoundrel, who dares to look on me with so insolent a stare!" exclaimed the Duke, turning to Wolfe. Pausing for a moment at the brutal order, according to the narrative of an eye-witness, Wolfe replied : — " My commission is at your Royal Highness's dis- posal ; I am a soldier, not an executioner ;" and so some meaner hand had to be found for the deed of butchery. There is no pleasure in dwelling on such memories, or cherishing associations of our hero with a victory so dishonourable. Smol- lett penned, with passionate earnestness, his " Tears of Scotland ; " and Collins, with the gentler sympathies of a stranger, wrote his exquisite Ode : " How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, By all their country's wishes blest ! " The victor had done his best to disrredit his own cause and render the name and race of the Guelphs more hateful to Scotsmen than even the persecutions of the Restoration K-ings had made those of the Stuarts. Five years thereafter his dissolute, worthless, elder brother, Frederick, Prince of Wales — heir to the throne, — in the midst of paltry cabals and Court squabbles, suddenly died, and his epitaph . with that of his whole race, is thus feelingly ^■•t forth by the English muse : " Here lies J'rince Fred, Who was alive, and is dead ; Had it liecn his father, I had much rather ; Had it been his brother, Sooner than any other j Had it been his sister. There's no one would have miss'd her ; Had it been his whole generation, Uest of all for the nation : But since it's only Fred, There's no more to be said 1 " Let us remember — in order that we may rightly estimate this landmark of a time so different from ou: own, — that this same " poor Fred " is the great grandfather of our beloved Queen. But to return to our hero. After a brief sojourn in the district between Loch Lomond and the Trossachs — since celebrated in ro- mance and song — where Wolfe was sent to garrison the Fort of Inversnaid, once a stronghold of the old freebooter, Rob Roy, he was recalled to active service in the Seven Years' War. At the battle of Landfelt, where he was Major of Brigade, the entire brunt fell on the British left. He was num- bered among the wounded ; and received the special thanks of the General for gal- lantry on the field. At Nesselroy and else- where he served with increasing distinction, and was noted for the fine discipline of his brigade. Yet amid all the harsh realities of war the heart of the soldier retained its youthful freshness unimpaired. It was subsequent to all this schooling in the bloody trade of war tiiat Wolfe returned to Scotland in 1 749, a Major, and ere long a Lieutenant-Colonel, though only in his twenty-third year, and wrote the first cf those Glasgow letters in which we find the worldly wisdom of his mother in conflict with love's first young dream. His letters are invaluable for the glimpses they reveal of the earnest self-con- trol, and the modesty of a noble nature. When entering on his duties as Lieutenant- Colonel, he thus writes : " I take upon me the difficult duty of a commander. It is a hard thing to keep the passions within bounds, where authority and immaturity go together. It is hard to be a severe disci- plinarian, yet humane ; to study the temper of all and endeav .ur to please them, and yet be impartial ; to discourage vice at the tur- bulent age of twenty-three." But with heart unsullied, in barrack as in camp, he writes his mother, regretting the want of such religious services as he had been familiar with, but rejoicing that the worship of God and the Christian Sabbath are still within his reach ; and so he tells her he is acquiring the reputation of ^ good Presbyterian by his regular attendance at the Scottish Kirk. When we recall the prevail- ing mode of thought of that eighteenth cen- 4 * 1 * tio THE CANADIAN MONTHLY. tury, it is no slight token of a genuine reli- gious feeling to find the young soldier, among strangers, and with an unfamiliar form of worship, perseveringly frequenting the house of God. A period of imbecility, gloom, and disaster, tnarked England's share in the war which followed soon after the truce of Aix-la- Chapelle, till the Great Commoner was called to the councils of the Nation. Forthwith vigour took the place of despondency and defeat. Men were entrusted with the con- duct of the war because of approved fitness, and not from family connections or parlia- mentary interest ; and, among the rest, young Wolfe was selected by Pitt, and sent with General Amherst to this continent, where Lord Loudon had been conducting matters to most unsatisfactory results. Forthwith all was changed. At Louisbourg, Cape Breton, Brigadier Wolfe effected a landing under the eye of the General and Admiral Boscawen, in the face of powerful batteries, and with a sea so violent that many boats were foundered; and pushed on the siege till Louisbourg fell, and Cape Breton with it. The fleet to w'lich the Court of Versailles had confided the defence of French America was destroyed ; the captured standards were borne in triumph from Kensington Palace to the City, and there suspended in St. Paul's, amid the roar of cannon and the shouts of the people ; and, as Walpole writes, " our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories ! " The energy of the great Minister seemed to extend its influence everywhere. The year 1759 opened with the conquest of Goree; next Gurdaloupe fell ; then Ticonderoga and Niagara, bringing that old war, in fancy, to our own doors. And as on land, so was it at sea. The Toulon squadron was com- jiletely defeated by Admiral Boscawen off Cape Lagos, while Wolfe — now General of the forces of the St. Lawrence,— was pre- paring for the achievement which was to crown the triumphs of the year with sadness and with glory. The season was already far advanced. He had tried in vain to effect a landing below the Montmorency, and do battle with Montcalm where he lay en- trenched at Beauport. All fears or hopes of aid from the French fleet were at an end. But Montcalm had other resources ; had already — though in vain — tried, by fire-ships and rafts, to annihilate the English fleet. His best hope now lay in the equinox, and early winter beyond, with their gales, to drive General and Admiral both out of the St. Lawrence ; and he already flattered himself that Quebec and French America were as good as safe for another year. The English General's fears corresponded only too closely thereto. Fatigue and anxiety preyed on his deUcate frame. A violent fever prostrated him for a time ; but, un- daunted, he returned to his work, and at length the night of September 12th, 1759, had come, and the dawn of his fortunate day. His force, 5,000 i..ien in all, had been alrea- dy transported above Quebec. This he em- barked in boats, dropt down the broad river in silence, under the stars : and as he glides swiftly towards victory a.id death, a little incident illuminates for us the stealthy machi- nations of that night with a tender spiritual ray. John Robison, a young midshipman — long after well known as Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, — was in the same boat with the general, and loved in after years to recall the incident. As they glided down the river with muffled oars, Wolfe repeated in a low voice some stanzas from Gray's Elegy — then in the first blush of its fame, — ending with the prophetic lines ; — " The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike th' inevitable hour : The paths of glory lead but to the grave. " And as he closed, he added that he would rather be author of that poem than victor in the impending battle. On the triumph which followed, we need K> WOLFE AND OLD QUEBEC. Ill \> I '7 not here dwell. Wolfe's Cove, Cape Dia- mond, and the Plain of Abraham, with all their historic memories, are indelibly im- printed on every Canadian mind. With the morning's sun the flag of England floated over the heights of Quebec, marking an era in the world's history. This continent, thenceforth, under whatever form of gov- ernment, was to be English, not French. Wolfe's work was done, and he ad Mont- calm lay there peaceful in the brotherhood of death. For Wolfe, it was the close of a life that miglit well be envied. Tender and true as Nelson himself, and with a nobler moral self-command ; he had fallen in the arms of victory, the youngest of England's generals since the old heroic days of the Black Prince. He was only in his thirty-third year. At home, the old general, his father, lay dying — died indeed before the news of mingled pride and sorrow could reach his ear. But besides the widowed mourner who survived, there was another to weep in that hour of England's triumph. His affianced bride was then vainly watching with longing eyes, for her young soldier's return. She was a rich heiress, and he an only son. They had everything that heart could desire ; and she had urged his stay with all the elo- quence of love. But duty called him, and, however reluctantly, he obeyed. The verses have been preserved which he addressed, on the eve of his departure, to the bride he was never to wed. They will not compare with Gray's " Elegy," but they have an inter- est of their own, as where he urges : " Two passions v.iinly pleading, My beating heart divide ; Lo ! there my country bleeding, And here my weeping bride. " And while thus pleading for that inevitable separation, he reminds her that — " No distance hearts can sunder Whom mutual truth has joined." Thus fresh in all the passionate tenderness and fervour of youth was that heart which sacrificed love to duty on the field of death. He gave his bride, as a lover's token, at that last parting, a locket containing some of his own hair. She lived to become Coun- tess of Bolton ; but to the day of her death she wore on her bosom Wolfe's last gift, covered with crape. England failed not to render what honours could be lavished on him who had thus found in the path of duty the way to glory and to death. The difficulties which Wolfe had to contend with had seemed insuperable- No one dreamt of success. Horace Walpole — a gc d specimen of the croakers of that day as Oi our wn — is found writing to his friend. Sir J Mann, while tardy winds were wat OSS the ocean news of the victory already .1 : — " We have failed at Quebec, as we certainly s/ialll" Fancy the revulsion of feeling on the falsi- fying of such predictions — the exulting pride, the national outburst of tearful joy. The poet Cowper recalls the time, as one when it was — " Praise enough To fill the ambition of a private man, That Chatham's language was his mother tongue, And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own." Yet, also, it is well to realize to our own minds that which is so true a picture of what never fails as the attendant on war's trium- phal car : the mother, just widowed ; the bride unwed ; answering to the nation's joy- bells with their tears. All that the unavailing honours of this world can bestow waited on the victor's bier. West made his death the subject of his finest painting ; Wilton, in Westminster Abbey, embodied the nation's gratitude in the sculp- tured marble of his tomb ; and in the Senate, with more than wonted effort, Chatham strove to give expression to the universal sorrow. The feelings which thus found utterance in the fresh consciousness of his loss, remain associated with his memory to this hour. He lives on the historic page, 113 THE CANADIAN MONTHLY. he dwells in our memories, Id the beauty of perpetual youth. Had Wolfe lived to mature his judgment by age and experience, he might have rivalled Marlborough and Wellington. Nay more, with Wolfe in the place of Howe or Burgoyne, in later American campaigns, he might have achieved less enviable triumphs and changed the destinies of the world. It is better as it is. He won unsullied laurels fighting his country's battles against a foreign foe. He had every motive that this world could offer to make life covetable ; but he had lived in the thought of a life beyond, and, as he saw that work triumphantly ac- complished which had been given him to do, he exclaimed, " Now God be praised, I die happy ! " Such dead may indeed be pro- nounced happy. " The glory dies not, and the grief is past." But there was another hero of that fated field for whose tomb " the boast of heraldry" found no laurel wreaths. The young Mar- quis de Montcalm, whose name generous hands have since graven on the same column with that of Wolfe on the ramparts of Que- bec, appears to have been a leader of excep- tional worth among those whom the worth- less Louis XV. delighted to honour. A letter of his, written to a cousin in France, only three weeks before the fail of Quebec, shows a statesmanlike prevision very sug- gestive to us now. Anticipating possible results, with the English masters of the river and the French fleet annihilated, he says, " If Wolfe beat me here, France has lost America utterly." But as he tells his friend, there lies for comfort in the future what even Chatham failed to foresee: — with all occa- sion for defence against French neighbours removed, " our only consolation is that, in ten years, America will be in revolt against England ! " So shrewdly reasoned Montcalm, as he looked from that old vantage ground into the future of this continent; and though there is no longer the jealousy of rival Euro- pean powers to act as a counterpoise to American assumption, the foresight of the young Frenchman has still a lesson for our- selves. The generous emulation of Canada and the United States can only prove health- ful to both. The habits of self-government learned from the same parent, may help, in honourable rivalry, to correct failures of each, while adapting to this new world free institu- tions inherited by both frqm England. But the dream of absorbing this whole continent into one unwieldy Republic is only suited to Young America in the stage of boastful in- experience. Should it ever be realized, tlie teachings of the past point to it as the mere transitional step to greater disunion. The bounds of our Dominion are, on the whole, well defined ; and our historical indi- viduality is determined by antecedents which it would puzzle the chroniclings of a Mon- roe doctrinaire to fit into the strange patch- work of his ideal Republic of the future. The French-Canadian who calmly reviews what the France of his fathers of the Louis XV. era \^as ; what New France of the sub- sequent Revolution era has been ; what share has meanwhile been frankly accorded to him in working out free institutions on a wiser and surer basis ; and what his own Nouvelle France, and the ampler Canada of the united races have become, has no reason to dissociate old Quebec from his cherished memories. But whirled into a political vor- tex which imposed on us the celebration of Fourth of July anniversaries, the memories of Quebec and those J. Queenston Heights would equally puzzle us to reconcile with loyalty to the State on which they had been engrafted. There need be no antagonism between Canada and the United States — sprung like ourselves from tne loins of Old England j nor all unworthy of her parentage. Nor need we shrink from acknowledging that the independence of the old Colonies was a victory in the cause of freedom, in which England herself has been a gainer i for the triumph of Lord North, and of King *> m an do has Enj coll Lo) WOLFE AND OLD (QUEBEC. "3 George, would have impeded later hard-won rights which have made it impossible that an English minister shall ever again dare to do what Lord North then did. But Canada has no inheritance in the memories of New England grievances : unless it be those re- collections which she loves to cherish of Loyalist forefathers, whose fidelity to the Empire overbore all consciousness of per- sonal wrongs. The geographical and poli- tical characteristics of Canada alike shape out for it an autonomy of its own ; and it were well that the statesmen of this continent should lay to heart all that is involved in the wise foresight with which Montcalm forecast its future. France unquestionably had her revenge for the defeat at Quebec, in the revolution of 1783 ; and reaped revenge's fitting harvest in her own Reign of Terror, and all the endless revolutions that have followed, to prove her incapacity for self-government. For whether America forget it or not, England had trained her children to deal even with revolution, as fi-eemen, and not as slaves broke loose. A grand experiment in the science of self- government has been entrusted to us ; and the American Republic, with its Washington beaurocracy, and the quadrennial throes of its Presidential elections, has not so solved the problem that we must need cast in our lot among its^still partially United States, as though that were the sole avenue to a poli- tical millenium. A problem of singular interest is being solved here. Two races, the foremost in the ranks of humanity, long rivals in arts and arms : — the stolid, slow, but long-enduring Saxon ; the lively, impressible, gallant Frank, —are here invited to share a common destiny, and work out a future of their own. The Norman and Saxon of elder centuries have united with the Celt to make England what she is. Saxon, Norman, and Celt meet here anew, under other fortunes, to make of our common Dominion what future genera- tions will know how to prize. Men of the old French monarchy, before the eia of revolutions, have been succeeded by those who here, under the eegis of Eng- land, have been admitted and trained to all the rights and privileges of a free people. VEtat, ^est mot, was the maxim of Louis le Grand ; and his descendant, Louis XVL, reaped the ample harvest of such a seed- time. Happy, indeed, would be the Paris of to-day, if it could borrow the art of self- government from Quebec; and strangely constituted must his mind be, who, amid the absolute freedom of self-government which we enjoy, can dream of casting in his lot either with the sturdy Republic on our own borders, or its Gallic sister beyond the sea. It is a privilege not to be lightly thrown away, that we share the destinies of an Em- pire where the Rajah of a British Province on the Indian ocean — beyond the farthest foot-print of the Macedonian Alexander, — sends as his loyal gift to the Olympian Games of our common nationality, the prize-cup which victors from our young Dominion re- cently brought in triumph to our shores. The generation has not yet wholly passed away which stood undaunted against the banded powers of Europe ; and should the necessity for it recur, it will be seen that England to herself can still be true. Our living present, as well as the sacred memories which we inherit, as a member of that great British Confederacy which em- braces in one united Empire, India and Canada ; New Zealand and Newfoundland ; the Bahamas ; the Antilles ; Australia and the Cape; are too precious to be lightly cast away. But if the time is ever to come — "Far on in summers that we shall not see," — when this young Dominion shall stretch across the Continent, a free nation, with duties and with interests all its own; it will be for its interest as well as its honour that it can then look back only with loving memories on the common mother of the Anglo-Saxon race ; while it emulates her ex- ample, and aspires to her worth.