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Ladies and Gentlemen, I shall close this brief sum- 

 mary of the final struggle of French arms, with the 

 sympathetic, sentiments uttered by a United States 

 writer, endeared to us by several graphic sketches of 

 Canadian Life, W. D. Howells, Editor of the Atlantic 

 Monthly a famed novelist : 



" That strange colony of priests and soldiers, of 

 martyrs and heroes, of which, Quebec 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 spec- 

 tacle ; and Montcalm laying down his life to lose 

 Quebec, is not less affecting than Wolfe dying to earn 

 her. The heart opens towards the soldier who recited, 

 on the eve of his costly victory, the " ' Elegy in a 

 Country Churchyard,' which he would rather have 

 written than beat the French to-morrow ; " but it aches 

 for the defeated general, who, hurt to death, answered 

 when told how brief his time was, " So much the better ; 

 then I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec." 



