, where the Chevalier de
Belleisle and 4 or 5,000 lost their lives in about an hour. Captain
Cook was at Quebec, Master in the Royal Navy; "sounding the River,
and putting down buoys." Bougainville, another famous Navigator, was
Aide-de-Camp of Montcalm. There have been far-sounding Epics built
together on less basis than lies ready here, in this CAPTURE OF
QUEBEC;--which itself, as the Decision that America is to be English and
not French, is surely an Epoch in World-History! Montcalm was 48 when
he perished; Wolfe 33. Montcalm's skull is in the Ursulines Convent
at Quebec,--shown to the idly curious to this day. [Lieutenant-Colonel
Beatson, pp. 28, 15.]

It was on October 17th,--while Friedrich lay at Sophienthal, lamed
of gout, and Soltikof had privately fixed for home (went that day
week),--that this glorious bit of news reached England. It was only
three days after that other, bad and almost hopeless news, from the same
quarter; news of poor Wolfe's Repulse, on the other or eastern side
of Quebec, July 31st, known to us already, not known in England till
October 14th. Heightened by such contrast, the news filled all men with
a strange mixture of emotions. "The incidents of Dramatic Fiction,"
says one who was sharer in it, "could not have been conducted with more
address to lead an audience from despondency to sudden exultation, than
Accident had here prepared to excite the passions of a whole People.
They despaired; they triumphed; and they wept,--for Wolfe had fallen in
the hour of victory! Joy, grief, curiosity, astonishment, were
painted in every countenance: the more they inquired, the higher
their admiration rose. Not an incident but was heroic and affecting."
[Walpole, iii. 219.] America ours; but the noble Wolfe now not!

What Pitt himself said of these things, we do not much hear. On the
meeting of his Parliament, about a month hence, his Speech, somebody
having risen to congratulate and eulogize him, is still recognizably of
royal quality, if we evoke it from the Walpole Notes. Very modest, very
noble, true; and with fine pieties and magnanimities delicately audible
in it: "Not a week all Summer but has been a crisis, in which I have
not known whether I should not be torn to pieces, instead of being
commended, as now by the Honorable Member. The hand of Divine
Providence; the more a man is versed in business, the more he everywhere
traces that!... Success has given us unanimity, not unanimity success.
Fo