— 52 — 



manuscript, among which I spied General de Mont- 

 calm's journal, the journal of Chevalier de Levis, their 

 correspondence, that of de Vaudreuil, de Bourlamaque, 

 Bigot, and of a crowd of civil and military officers of 

 Canada, with Chevalier de Levis' narratives of several 

 expeditions, dispatches and letters from the court, at 

 Versailles. Nearly all these documents had never been 

 publistied. For more than a century lying buried in the 

 recesses of a provincial library, they had thus escaped 

 the eye of the student. 



" General de Levis, whilst iu Canada, was in the 

 habit of noting down in his journal the incidents of his 

 campaigns, and also retained copies of his active corres- 

 pondence. 



" At the death of de Montcalm, de Levis became the 

 trustee of all the documents which the dying General 

 had bequeathed him. De Levis even went to the trouble 

 of having transcribed carefully his journal and his cor- 

 respondence ; arranged by order of date the letters of 

 the divers persons with whom he had intercourse in 

 Canada, and had the whole bound with a degree of 

 carefulness — nay, of elegance, as to denote the impor- 

 tance he attached to it. 



" That invaluable collection is to-day the property of 

 Count de Nicolai. The Province of Quebec is now the 

 owner of a copy made, the publication of which began 

 in 1889, is to be borne by the Provincial authorities as 

 to cost. 



" The persual of these MSS. — whose publication I 

 am to direct — gave me the idea of writing the history 

 of the epoch which they cover — which is, undoubtedly, 

 the most interesting in our annals. Every incident of 

 importance, pending the war which ended French rule 

 in Canada, recalls the career of de Montcalm and de 

 Levis. Of all the historians who have described this 

 period, Mr. Frs. Parkman is the only one who has done 

 so in detail. He performed his task with such ability, 

 so much science, that none can make it a matter of 



