desire to see their church finished, but
they were poor, and, though a collection had brought in, in 1676, the
sum of two thousand seven hundred francs, the work dragged along for two
years more, and was finished only in 1678. "The church had," says M.
Morin, "the form of a Roman cross, with the lower sides ending in a
circular apse; its portal, built of hewn stone, was composed of two
designs, one Tuscan, the other Doric; the latter was surmounted by a
triangular pediment. This beautiful entrance, erected in 1722, according
to the plans of Chaussegros de Lery, royal engineer, was flanked on the
right side by a square tower crowned by a campanile, from the summit of
which rose a beautiful cross with _fleur-de-lis_ twenty-four feet high.
This church was built in the axis of Notre-Dame Street, and a portion of
it on the Place d'Armes; it measured, in the clear, one hundred and
forty feet long, and ninety-six feet wide, and the tower one hundred and
forty-four feet high. It was razed in 1830, and the tower demolished in
1843."

Montreal continued to progress, and therefore to build. The Sulpicians,
finding themselves cramped in their old abode, began in 1684 the
construction of a new seigniorial and chapter house, of one hundred and
seventy-eight feet frontage by eighty-four feet deep. These vast
buildings, whose main facade faces on Notre-Dame Street, in front of the
Place d'Armes, still exist. They deserve the attention of the tourist,
if only by reason of their antiquity, and on account of the old clock
which surmounts them, for though it is the most ancient of all in North
America, this clock still marks the hours with average exactness. Behind
these old walls extends a magnificent garden.

The spectacle presented by Ville-Marie at this time was most edifying.
This great village was the school of martyrdom, and all aspired thereto,
from the most humble artisan and the meanest soldier to the brigadier,
the commandant, the governor, the priests and the nuns, and they found
in this aspiration, this faith and this hope, a strength and happiness
known only to the chosen. From the bosom of this city had sprung the
seventeen heroes who gave to the world, at the foot of the Long Sault, a
magnificent example of what the spirit of Christian sacrifice can do; to
a population which gave of its own free will its time and its labour to
the building of a temple for the Lord, God had assigned a leader, who
took upon his shoulders a h