to carry their point while they content themselves with attacking us from the opposite shore, which we have abandoned to them from the moment of their landing. Yet, after three months attempting it, they are no farther advanced in the siege than they were on the first day. The enemy ruins us, but enriches not himself. The campaign cannot last above a month longer, on account of the approach of autumn, which is terrible to a fleet in these seas,* as the winds then blow, constantly and periodically, with a most violent and impetuous fury.

It should seem, then, that after such a happy prelude the security of the colony is not much in danger. Nothing, however, is less certain; the taking of Quebec depends on one masterly stroke. The English are masters of the river; they have only to effect a landing in that part where the city is situated, unfortified and defenceless. They are in a condition to give us battle, which I must not refuse, and which I cannot hope to gain. General Wolfe, indeed, if he understands his business, has only to receive our first fire, and then advancing briskly on my army, and giving one heavy and general discharge, my Canadians, undisciplined, deaf to the sound of the drum and other military instruments, thrown likewise into disorder by the slaughter, would no more return to their ranks. Besides, they have no bayonets to make their ground good against those of the enemy; nothing remains for them but to run, and thus I shall be totally defeated. Such is my situation- -a situation most grievous to a general, and which indeed gives me many bitter moments. The confidence I have of this has induced me always to act on the defensive, which has hitherto succeeded;but will it succeed in the end? The event must decide. But of one thing be certain, that I probably shall not survive the loss of the colony. There are situations in which it only remains to a general to fall with honor. Such this appears me; and on this head posterity shall not reproach my memory. Though Fortune may decide upon my life, she shall not decide on my opinions; they are truly French, and shall be so even in the grave, if in the grave we are anything! I shall at least console myself on my defeat, and on the loss of the colony, by the full persuasion that this defeat will one day serve my country more than a victory, and that the conqueror, in aggrandizing himself, will find his tomb the country he gains from us.

to

Rather "quarters" (parages); but Almon's translation has here been followed throughout.

[Montcalm anticipates a continually increasing alienation of the New England colonists from England; a conflict of American manufacturing interests with the English; a general revolt of the American possessions; an overwhelming disaster to England.]

See, then, what now consoles me, as a Frenchman, for the imminent danger my country runs of losing this colony; but, as a general, I will do my best to preserve it. The king, my

master, orders me to do so; that is sufficient. You know we are of that blood which was always faithful to its kings, and it is not for me to degenerate from the virtue of my ancestors. I send you these reflections with this view, that if the fate of arms in Europe should ever oblige us to bend and to receive the law, you may make use of them in such manner as the love of your country shall direct you.-I have the honor to be, my dear cousin, your most humble, etc.,

CAMP BEFORE QUEBEC, August 24, 1759.

MONTCALM.

THE DEATH OF MONTCALM.

J. M. LE MOINE (b. at Quebec 1825).

[The Battle of the Plains of Abraham was fought on 13th September 1759; Wolfe died on the field. Montcalm was mortally wounded; he died early on the morning of the 14th, but whether within the fortifications or under the shelter of a private dwelling in the city remains unsettled.]

It is reported of Montcalm, that when his wounds were dressed he requested the surgeons in attendance to declare at once whether they were mortal. On being told that they were So, "I am glad of it," said he. He then inquired how long he might survive. He was answered, "Ten or twelve hours, perhaps less." "So much the better," replied he; "then I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec." On being afterwards visited by M. de Ramesay, who commanded the garrison, with the title of Lieutenant du Roy, and by the Commandant de Roussillon, he said to them, "Gentlemen, I commend to your keeping the honor of France. Endeavor to secure the retreat of my army to-night beyond Cape Rouge. For myself, I shall pass the night with God, and prepare myself for death." On M. de Ramesay pressing to receive his commands respecting the defence of Quebec, Montcalm exclaimed with emotion, "I will

I have much

neither give orders nor interfere any further. business that must be attended to, of greater moment than your ruined garrison and this wretched country. My time is very short, so pray leave me. I wish you all comfort, and to be happily extricated from your present perplexities." He then addressed himself to his religious duties, and passed the night with the bishop and his own confessor. Before he died, he paid the victorious army this magnanimous compliment: "Since it was my misfortune to be discomfited and mortally wounded, it is a great consolation to me to be vanquished by so brave and generous an enemy. If I could survive this, gladly would I engage to beat three times the number of such forces as I commanded this morning with a third of British troops."

Almost his last act was to write a letter recommending the French prisoners to the generosity of the victors. He died at five o'clock in the morning of the 14th September, and was buried in an excavation made by the bursting of a shell within the precincts of the Ursuline Convent—a fit resting-place for the remains of a man who died fighting for the honor and defence of his country. De Ramesay's capitulation on 18th September 1759 brought round a momentous change. From the lofty cape, where, for more than one hundred and fifty years, the white flag of France had waved defiantly with but one short interruption (1629-32), now streamed the banner of St. George; a Hanoverian sovereign, who held his sceptre by virtue of the conquest of England by William the Norman, was called on to rule, by conquest, over a Norman colony. History has many of these mysterious teachings. Quebec Past and Present.

SCENE FROM "SAUL.”

CHARLES HEAVYSEGE (1816-1876).

[The career of Saul, king of Israel, so fascinated the poetic fancy of our Canadian dramatist Heavysege, that in his hands it became the subject of a sacred trilogy-three plays, each of five acts and many scenes, making in all some ten thousand lines of blank verse. Passages of undoubted power won high praise from Nathaniel Hawthorne, who sent a copy of "Saul" to the North British Review. The latter said of Heavysege: "Shakspeare he knows far better than most men know him, for he has discerned and adopted his method as no other dramatist has done."]

Saul. All's over here; let us withdraw, and weep
Down in the red recesses of our hearts;

Or, in our spirits, silent, curse the cravens
Whom uttered execrations too much honor.
Home, home, let us, dishonored-home, if there
Be yet for us a home, and the Philistines
Drive us not forth to miserable exile.

Will they allow us, like to a breathed hare,
Spent, to return and repossess our form?*
Will they endure us in Gibeah? or must we
Discover some dark den on Lebanon,

And dwell with lions? or must we with foxes
Burrow, and depend on cunning for our food?
Better with lions and with foxes making,
Than be companions of the brood of Israel;
Yea, better with the hill-wolf famishing,
Than_battening with the drove that forms the world.
Alas, my sisters,-

Jon.
Saul.

Alas, thy mother! she

The silent critic on my life. Thy mother
And sisters may be forced, ere long, to dwell
In some dank cave, or o'er the borders flee
With us, and seek in some strange realm asylum.
Why, let it be so; we can live 'midst strangers.
Of all the myriads who followed us hither,
How many are left us?......

O Jonathan, thy glorious deed at Geba,
Put out unto unworthy usury,

Is lost in Gilgal's issue!

Jon.
Yearn not o'er me.
What we have done, O king and sire, is ours,
Part of ourselves—yea more, it will not die
When we shall, nor can any steal it;
For honor hath that cleaving quality,

It sticks upon us, and none may remove it,
Except ourselves by future deeds of baseness.

Saul. We never were so poor since we grew rich.
Jon. We will grow richer than we yet have been;
And, from this need, yet heap up such abundance,
That we shall wonder why we ever sorrowed
At this petty pilfering.

Saul. Pilfering! That's the word.

Yes, Jonathan, we have been meanly pilfered;

Rats have been stealing the grain from out our garner: Each runaway was a rat; and for seven days

An ancient friend still oped our granary door,

Then snapped on me the recuperated + trap

That should have caught the vermin. Saul (2nd ed., 1859). + To which the springs had been restored.

*Hare's bed.

"THE TROUT IN YONDER WIMPLING BURN." ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796).-Written by Burns in his last illness.

[The following pathetic lines were written by Burns during his last illness. They were discovered in 1874, written in the poet's autograph on the second, third, and fourth pages of a sheet of letter-paper, the following note occupying the first page: "Mrs. W. Riddell, Halcaths. The health you wished me in your morning's card is, I think, flown from me for ever. I have not been able to leave my bed to-day till about an hour ago. Those wickedly unlucky. advertisements I lent (I did wrong) to a friend, and I am ill able to go in quest of him. The Muses have not quite forsaken me. The following detached stanzas I intend to interweave in some disastrous tale of a shepherd 'despairing beside a clear stream: '"-]