( — 183 — 



The recognition, at Haberville Manor by its seignior, 

 of the only survivor, Luc de la Corne St. Luc, brought 

 tears to many eyes. 



Mr. de Gaspe had shown himself to be not a mere 

 clever delineator of character and incidents ; his part 

 seemed also to have been that of a gifted historian, with 

 ample stores of material to draw from. He had, from 

 the haunted halls of memory, summoned with striking 

 felicity those whom in his youth he had known, 

 admired and loved : men of martial aspect, women of 

 courtly nurture, who had sat at the festive board of 

 Governor de Vaudreuil, or taken a part in the revels of 

 the magnificent Intendant Bigot. 



The first edition of Les Anciens Canadiens disap- 

 peared, as if by magic, from the bookseller's shelves. 

 The work soon met with a translator in Mdme Pennee ; 

 very recently one of our most gifted poets, Geo. C. D. 

 Eoberts, has placed it before the British public, in 

 elegant English. 



The De Gaspe Memoirs have a fault — a grave one. 

 The facinated reader finds them much too short. 563 

 pages to embody an account of so many varied incidents, 

 covering seventy-nine years ; this is indeed a scanty 

 and too concise a record. 



Such as they are, let us be thankfull to the compiler 

 who thus awoke to find himself famous at the ripe age 

 of 79. 



As a whole, however, they are far from attaining 

 perfection. Many pages relating to family history and 

 ancestry might have been curtailed ; they must be of 

 very secondary interest to the general reader. But with 

 some short-comings, what a fund of wit, good-humored 

 repartee, keen observation is mixed up ! I cannot pre- 

 tend to disclose but short glimpses of social life, vistas 

 of the domestic career of some of our Governors, so 

 pleasantly told by M. de Gaspe, trusting those unwritten 

 pages of history may amuse. 



