[From The Land we live in]. 



QUEBEC SOCIETY, AS IT WAS, 



We are indebted to J. M. LeMoine, the Histo- 

 rian of Canada, for the following extract from a letter 

 evidently written in ] 759, by Major Eobert Stobo (1), 

 a famous Virginian officer, — then a prisoner of war at 

 Quebec, — to Col. George Washington. Mr. LeMoine 

 says that this extract is all he could find of this 

 interesting letter, in searching through the family papers 

 of an antiquarian friend ; there is yet enough of it to show 

 that " Still to the last, kind vice clung to the tott'ring 

 wall " of the French dynasty in Canada. 



" Dear George. — You will find this a lengthy epistle, let 

 me hope, a curious tale of colonial doings. I can put forth no 

 other apology for boring you, than the imperative necessity 

 I experience of occupying my mind : else ennui and nothing 

 to do would, 1 fear, soon drive me hopelessly mad. Four years 

 of prison life for a full-blooded Virginian is rather too much at 

 one stretch. 



I will prepare for your eye a startling, but truthful record 

 of court intrigues, elegant profligacy and public plunder. 

 Some years ago, on my visiting London, my kind protector, 

 Lord Bute, procured me an entree to the fashionable society 

 of the metropolis. I saw its great men. I saw their vices. 

 I have not forgotten my disgust at seeing the vices of some 

 of the painted jezabels surrounding our king — around virtuous 

 Queen Caroline. I noticed those visions of purity and loveli- 

 ness, the Bellendens, the Lepells ; my friend Smollett intro- 

 duced me to the patriotic Pitt, the brilliant Walpole ; one 

 figure especially did I loath, that Royal favorite, Lady 

 Yarmouth ; she who sold a bishopric for £500. Peg Woffington 



(1) Robert Stobo, a hostage at Fort Duquesne, sent down 

 to Quebec, in 1755, as a prisoner of war, escaped and served 

 under Wolfe, at Quebec in 1759. 



