usband, and he was
impartially fond of both: it was quite a family affair.

For a moment Isabel harbored the desire to see the city in company
with Miss Ellison; but it was only a passing weakness. She remembered
directly the coolness between friends which she had seen caused by
objects of interest in Europe, and she wisely deferred a more intimate
acquaintance till it could have a purely social basis. After all,
nothing is so tiresome as continual exchange of sympathy or so apt to
end in mutual dislike,--except gratitude. So the ladies parted friends
till dinner, and drove off in separate carriages.

As in other show cities, there is a routine at Quebec for travellers who
come on Saturday and go on Monday, and few depart from it. Our friends
necessarily, therefore, drove first to the citadel. It was raining one
of those cold rains by which the scarce-banished winter reminds the
Canadian fields of his nearness even in midsummer, though between the
bitter showers the air was sultry and close; and it was just the light
in which to see the grim strength of the fortress next strongest to
Gibraltar in the world. They passed a heavy iron gateway, and up through
a winding lane of masonry to the gate of the citadel, where they were
delivered into the care of Private Joseph Drakes, who was to show them
such parts of the place as are open to curiosity. But, a citadel which
has never stood a siege, or been threatened by any danger more serious
than Fenianism, soon becomes, however strong, but a dull piece of
masonry to the civilian; and our tourists more rejoiced in the crumbling
fragment of the old French wall which the English destroyed than in all
they had built; and they valued the latter work chiefly for the glorious
prospects of the St. Lawrence and its mighty valleys which it commanded.
Advanced into the centre of an amphitheatre inconceivably vast, that
enormous beak of rock overlooks the narrow angle of the river, and then,
in every direction, immeasurable stretches of gardened vale, and wooded
upland, till all melts into the purple of the encircling mountains. Far
and near are lovely white villages nestling under elms, in the heart of
fields and meadows; and everywhere the long, narrow, accurately divided
farms stretch downward to the river-shores. The best roads on the
continent make this beauty and richness accessible; each little village
boasts some natural wonder in stream, or lake, or cataract: and this
landscape,