the field of fight. The contending armies were nearly equal in military strength, if not in numbers. The chiefs of each were men already of honorable fame. France trusted firmly in the wise and chivalrous Montcalm; England trusted hopefully in the young and heroic Wolfe. The magnificent stronghold which was staked upon the issue of the strife stood close at hand. For miles and miles around, the prospect extended over as fair a land as ever rejoiced the sight of man; mountain and valley, forest and waters, city and solitude, grouped together in forms of almost ideal beauty.

The strife was brief, but deadly. The September sun rose upon two gallant armies arrayed in unbroken pride, and noon of the same day saw the ground where they had stood strewn with the dying and the dead. Hundreds of the veterans of France had fallen in the ranks, from which they disdained to fly; the scene of his ruin faded fast from Montcalm's darkening sight, but the proud consciousness of having done his duty deprived defeat and death of their severest sting. Not more than a musket-shot away lay Wolfe; the heart that but an hour before had throbbed with great and generous impulse, now still forever. On the face of the dead there rested a triumphant smile, which the last agony had not overcast; a light of unfailing hope, that the shadows of the grave could not darken.

The portion of history here recorded is no fragment. Within a period comparatively brief, we see the birth, the growth, and the catastrophe of a nation. The flag of France is erected at Quebec by a handful of hardy adventurers; a century and a half has passed, and that flag is lowered to a foreign foe before the sorrowing eyes of a Canadian people. This example is complete as that presented in the life of an individual: we see the natural sequence of events; the education and the character, the motive and the action, the error and the punishment. Through the following records may be clearly traced combinations of causes, remote, and even apparently opposed, uniting in one result, and also the surprising fertility of one great cause in producing many different results.

Were we to read the records of history by the light of the understanding instead of by the fire of the passions, the study could be productive only of unmixed good; their examples and warnings would afford us constant guidance in the paths of public and private virtue. The narrow and unreasonable notion of exclusive national merit can not survive a fair glance over the vast map of time and space which history lays before us. We may not avert our eyes from those dark spots upon the annals of our beloved land where acts of violence and injustice stand recorded against her, nor may we suffer the blaze of military renown to dazzle our judgment. Victory may bring glory to the arms, while it brings shame to the councils of a people; for the triumphs of war are those of the general and the soldier; increase of honor, wisdom, and prosperity are the triumphs of the nation.

The citizens of Rome placed the images of their ancestors in the vestibule, to recall the virtues of the dead, and to stimulate the emulation of the living. We also should fix our thoughts upon the examples which history presents, not in a vain spirit of selfish nationality, but in earnest reverence for the great and good of all countries, and a contempt for the false, and mean, and cruel even of our own.

THE CONQUEST OF CANADA.

CHAPTER I.

The philosophers of remote antiquity acquired the important knowledge of the earth's spherical form; to their bold genius we are indebted for the outline of the geographical system now universally adopted. With a vigorous conception, but imperfect execution, they traced out the scheme of denoting localities by longitude and latitude: according to their teaching, the imaginary equatorial line, encompassing the earth, was divided into hours and degrees.

Even at that distant period hardy adventurers had penetrated far away into the land of the rising sun, and many a wondrous tale was told of that mysterious empire, where one third of our fellow-men still stand apart from the brotherhood of nations. Among the various and astounding exaggerations induced by the vanity of the narrators, and the ignorance of their audience, none was more ready than that of distance. The journey, the labor of a life; each league of travel a new scene; the day crowded with incident, the night a dream of terror or admiration. Then, as the fickle will of the wanderer suggested, as the difficulties or encouragement of nature, and the hostility or aid of man impelled, the devious course bent to the north or south, was hastened, hindered, or retraced.

By such vague and shadowy measurement as the speculations of these wanderers supplied, the sages of the past traced out the ideal limits of the dry land which, at the word of God, appeared from out the gathering together of the waters.[2]

The most eminent geographer before the time of Ptolemy places the confines of Seres—the China of to-day—at nearly two thirds of the distance round the world, from the first meridian.[3] Ptolemy reduces the proportion to one half. Allowing for the supposed vast extent of this unknown country to the eastward, it was evident that its remotest shores approached our Western World. But, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the dark and stormy waters of the Atlantic[5] forbade adventure. The giant minds of those days saw, even through the mists of ignorance and error, that the readiest course to reach this distant land must lie toward the setting sun, across the western ocean.[6] From over this vast watery solitude no traveler had ever brought back the story of his wanderings. The dim light of traditionary memory gave no guiding ray, the faint voice of rumor breathed not its mysterious secrets. Then poetic imagination filled the void; vast islands were conjured up out of the deep, covered with unheard-of luxuriance of vegetation, rich in mines of incalculable value, populous with a race of conquering warriors. But this magnificent vision was only created to be destroyed; a violent earthquake rent asunder in a day and a night the foundations of Atlantis, and the waters of the Western Ocean swept over the ruins of this once mighty empire.[7] In after ages we are told, that some Phœnician vessels, impelled by a strong east wind, were driven for thirty days across the Atlantic: there they found a part of the sea where the surface was covered with rushes and sea-weed, somewhat resembling a vast inundated meadow.[8] The voyagers