sun, we lingered in the cool shades of the St.
Lawrence Hall Hotel until two in the afternoon.
To broil in Canada was with me a new sensation,
for on the occasion of my last visit to
Montreal, the thermometer had been at a whole
flight of stairs below zero, and my tour round
the mountain accomplished in a sleigh, with
such a jingling accompaniment of bells as might
have been envied by the celebrated female
traveller to Banbury Cross. But why did she
not attach the bells to the cockhorse instead of
to her toes? There are but two changes of the
seasons at Montreal; but they are pantomimic
in their suddenness. I could scarcely believe
that the Mr. Hogan who suggested iced sangaree,
or a trifle in the way of a cobbler ere we
started for Cuagnawagha, was the same obliging
host who, the last time I started from St. Lawrence
Hall, had lent me the skin (seemingly) of a
megatherium to wrap myself in, with a mighty
fur cap and a pair of sealskin gloves like unto
leviathan his paws, and had whispered that half
way round the mountain there were some
excellent hot "whisky skins" to be obtained.

The drive to La Chine was not very interesting.
Few drives in North America, save where the
scenery is mountainous, can be said to possess
much interest, picturesquely speaking. The farming
is all doubtless in strict accordance with the
precepts of Jethro Tull, great-grandfather of
Anglo-Saxon husbandry; but to the European
eye it looks shiftless and slovenly. The fields
are too large (which would scarcely be a fault
in the eye of a farmer); there are ugly posts
and rails in lieu of hedges, and the trees are
few. Gentlemen's houses, parks, and pleasaunces
you never expect to see. Add to this an all-
pervading dust powdering the vegetation with
the monotonous livery of Midge the miller, and
those chronic Canadian nuisances, abundant
turnpike-gates. There were plenty of cattle
about, however, well bred and full of flesh, and
the cottages along the road, although mainly of
wood, had a substantial and satisfied appearance
as though they belonged to country folks who
ate meat every day. I am inclined to think
that meat twice, if not three times a day, would
be nearer the mark, as the habitual dietary of
the Canadian peasant or farmer, for they are
both one here. Given a country where the babes
and sucklings clamour for beefsteak at breakfast.
Should not that country be a happy one?

There was the usual confusion of French and
English nomenclature, and of Protestant and
Romanist places of worship, and of people of
Saxon and Celtic race along the road; but, as
seems happily the case in Canada, the Gaul and
the Saxon, the follower of Peter and the disciple
of Martin, seemed to get on pretty well together.
Fenianism was in an ugly embryo state when I
was in Canada. It had scarcely got beyond its
first fœtal squalling in its cradle in Chicago; and
the Canadian Paddy, so far as I had any
experience of him, was a jovial, easy-going mortal,
civil to the Saxon, obedient to his rule, and
passably contented with plenty of work and high
wages. I am inclined to hope, and even to
believe, that the outburst of Fenianism—now
grown from a fretful wail into a frantic howl—
notwithstanding the kind of Paddy I have
mentioned, is still in a majority in Lower Canada.
What he may be in the West, I am rather chary
of opining. On this present Sunday he was
evidently, so far as his patronage of French
and English public-houses went, wholly free
from prejudice. "The Queen's Arms" and
"Les Armes d'Angleterre " were all one to him.
I could not help thinking, as we saw these
hybrid taverns, that half-and-half should
properly be the only beverage sold there; and when
I passed a knot of scarlet-coated British Guardsmen
issuing from a wayside hostel, I fancied an
international version of the old nursery rhyme:
             Qui est Ià?
             A grenadier.
             Ou est votre argent?
             I forgot.
             Allez-vous en, ivrogne!
Conversations closely resembling the above
were certainly audible from time to time when
the Guards were in Canada. Happy was it when
they were content to demand a "pot of beer"
in lieu of the atrocious "whib eye," and the
abominable "fixed bayonets," the cheap whisky,
or cheap hell-fire of Canada. Not that the Guardsman
was given in any marked degree to misbehave
himself. He did not get tipsier, or with
greater frequency, than his cousin of the line
does in Gibraltar. He was much more sober in
Canada than he is generally in London. The
Guards were deservedly popular with the people
of Montreal, and went home "as fit as fiddles."
Many obtained their discharge while in America,
and married and settled in the province. They
must have been quick about their sweethearting;
but next to a sailor's, is there anything shorter
than a soldier's courtship? Three Sundays might
be given as a fair average. Let us take a
virtuously inclined corporal. A regiment, we will
say, disembarks on a Saturday night; on the
first Sunday afternoon you will meet your
virtuously inclined corporal walking down Notre-
Dame-street with a young lady in a three-dollar
shawl and a two-dollar bonnet. The next Sunday
if you happened to be passing down
Bonaventure-street, you might catch a glimpse of the
virtuously inclined corporal taking tea with the
entire family of his inamorata; cutting the
bread-and-butter, carving the ham, nursing the
married sister's baby, or handing the old grand-
sire a light for his pipe. And on Sunday number
three, you heard that Corporal Smith had
got leave to be married to a "kenuck." How
do they manage it, these wonderful military
men? What incandescent quality is there in
their scarlet coats to set maidens' hearts ablaze
so? How many weary months, years perhaps,
did it take you to win the present Mrs. Benedict?
Mind, I can't help thinking, that if civilians
would adopt the short sharp mode of military
courtship, the girls would meet them half
way. I heard of a train breaking down once
on the Camden and Amboy Railroad, and before
a fresh locomotive could be brought to its