ed inquiringly at
Basil, as if he might be a gentleman with a horse to be taken care of
and a place to be worked about, and made him regret that he was not a
man of substance enough to provide for Private Drakes and Mrs. Drakes
and the brood of Ducklings, who had been shown to him stowed away in one
of those cavernous rooms in the earthworks where the married soldiers
have their quarters. His regret enriched the reward of Private Drakes'
service,--which perhaps answered one of Private Drakes' purposes, if
not his chief aim. He promised to come to the States upon the pressing
advice of Isabel, who, speaking from her own large experience, declared
that everybody got on there,--and he bade our friends an affectionate
farewell as they drove away to the Plains of Abraham.

The fashionable suburban cottages and places of Quebec are on the St.
Louis Road leading northward to the old battle-ground and beyond it;
but, these face chiefly towards the rivers St. Lawrence and St. Charles,
and lofty hedges and shrubbery hide them in an English seclusion from
the highway; so that the visitor may uninterruptedly meditate whatever
emotion he will for the scene of Wolfe's death as he rides along. His
loftiest emotion will want the noble height of that heroic soul, who
must always stand forth in history a figure of beautiful and singular
distinction, admirable alike for the sensibility and daring, the poetic
pensiveness, and the martial ardor that mingled in him and taxed his
feeble frame with tasks greater than it could bear. The whole story of
the capture of Quebec is full of romantic splendor and pathos. Her fall
was a triumph for all the English-speaking race, and to us Americans,
long scourged by the cruel Indian wars plotted within her walls or
sustained by her strength, such a blessing as was hailed with ringing
bells and blazing bonfires throughout the Colonies; yet now we cannot
think without pity of the hopes extinguished and the labors brought to
naught in her overthrow. That strange colony of priests and soldiers, of
martyrs and heroes, of which she was the capital, willing to perish for
an allegiance to which the mother-country was indifferent, and fighting
against the armies with which England was prepared to outnumber the
whole Canadian population, is a magnificent spectacle; and Montcalm
laying down his life to lose Quebec is not less affecting than Wolfe
dying to win her. The heart opens towards the soldier who recited, on