cise
of benevolent feelings is more called for than in these two cities,
Quebec and Montreal. Here meet together the unfortunate, the
improvident, the helpless orphan, the sick, the aged, the poor virtuous
man, driven by the stern hand of necessity from his country and his
home, perhaps to be overtaken by sickness or want in a land of
strangers.

It is melancholy to reflect that a great number of the poorest class of
emigrants that perished in the reign of the cholera have left no trace
by which their sorrowing anxious friends in the old country may learn
their fate. The disease is so sudden and so violent that it leaves no
time for arranging worldly matters; the sentinel comes, not as it did to
Hezekiah, "Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live."

The weather is sultry hot, accompanied by frequent thunder-showers,
which have not the effect one would expect, that of cooling the heated
atmosphere. I experience a degree of languor and oppression that is very
distressing, and worse than actual pain.

Instead of leaving this place by the first conveyance for the upper
province, as we fully purposed doing, we find ourselves obliged to
remain two days longer, owing to the dilatoriness of the custom-house
officers in overlooking our packages. The fact is that everything and
everybody are out of sorts.

The heat has been too oppressive to allow of my walking much abroad. I
have seen but little of the town beyond the streets adjacent to the
hotel: with the exception of the Catholic Cathedral, I have seen few of
the public buildings. With the former I was much pleased: it is a fine
building, though still in an unfinished state, the towers not having
been carried to the height originally intended. The eastern window,
behind the altar, is seventy feet in height by thirty-three in width.
The effect of this magnificent window from the entrance, the altar with
its adornments and paintings, the several smaller altars and shrines,
all decorated with scriptural designs, the light tiers of galleries that
surround the central part of the church, the double range of columns
supporting the vaulted ceiling, and the arched windows, all combine to
form one beautiful whole. What most pleased me was the extreme lightness
of the architecture though I thought the imitation of marble, with which
the pillars were painted, coarse and glaring. We missed the time-
hallowing mellowness that age has bestowed on our ancient churches