. 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See Appendix, No. I. (see Vol II)]

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