grocerie" suggesting a compromise between "épicier," on the one part, and "grocer" on the other, was, to say the least, ingenious.

When I state that the Bank of Montreal is one of the finest examples of Corinthian architecture to be found on the American continent; that the Rue Notre Dame is full of gay and handsome shops, very like those of the Rue St. Honoré at Paris; that the Bonsecours Market is an imposing edifice in the Doric style, which cost two hundred and eighty thousand dollars; that the Court-house, or Palais de Justice, and the Post-office, are both vast and noble structures, and that the city is full of cottages, and schools, and hospitals, the blasé and the indifferent among my readers may perhaps begin to yawn, and to say that they have heard all this sort of thing before. I respectfully submit that, to all intents and purposes, they have heard this sort of thing but very seldom. I am bold enough to think that about nine-tenths even of my educated countrymen have about as definite an idea of Montreal, of Toronto, and of Quebec, as they have of Owyhee or of Antannarivo. Is it impertinent in me to assume that many in England are as ignorant as I was the day before yesterday? It seems to me that, abating a few merchants, a few engineers, and a few military men, it has hitherto been nobody's business in England to know what the Canadas are like. It is not the "thing" to go to Canada. One can "do" Niagara without penetrating into the British provinces. English artists don't make sketching excursions thither. The Alpine Club ignore it. Why does not some one start a Cataract Club? We let these magnificent provinces, with

their inexhaustible productiveness-for asperity of climate is no sterility—their noble cities, their hardy and loyal population, go by. We pass them in silence and neglect. We listen approvingly while some college pedant as bigoted as a Dominican, but without his acumen, as conceited as a Benedictine, but without his learning, prates of the expediency of abandoning our colonies. If we meanly and tamely surrendered these, the brightest jewels in the Queen's crown, can we tell into whose hands they would fall-what hatred and ill-will might spring up among those now steady and affectionate in their attachment to our rule, but from whom we had withdrawn our countenance and protection? But Canada has been voted a "bore" and to be "only a colonial" would apply, it would seem, to a province as well as to a bishop. I have not the slightest desire to talk guide-book, or even to institute odious comparisons, by dwelling on the strength and solidity, the cleanliness and comeliness, the regard for Authority, the cheery but self-respecting and respect-exacting tone which prevails in society; the hearty, pleasant, obliging manners of the people one sees at every moment in this faroff city of a hundred thousand souls, with its cathedrals, its palaces, its schools, its convents, its hospitals, its wharves, its warehouses, its marvellous Tubular Bridge, its constantlygrowing commerce, its hourly-increasing prosperity, its population of vivacious and chivalrous Frenchmen, who, somehow, do not hate their English and Scottish fellow-subjects, but live in peace and amity with them, and who are assuredly not in love with the Yankees. But it really does make a travelling Englishman "kinder mad," as they would say south of

the forty-fifth parallel, when he has just quitted a city which, in industry, in energy, and in public spirit is certainly second to none on the European continent; and which, in the cleanliness of its streets, the beauty of its public buildings, and the tone of its society surpasses many of them-to know that a majority of his country are under the impression that the Canadian towns are mere assemblages of log-huts, inhabited by half-savage backwoodsmen in blanket coats and mocassins; and that a few mischievous or demented persons are advocating the policy of giving up the Canadas altogether. Happily there is a gentleman in Pall Mall who has been to Canada-who has seen Quebec, and Toronto, and Montreal. The name of that gentleman-the first in our realm-is Albert Edward, Prince of Wales; and he knows what Canada is like, and of what great things it is capable.

CHAPTER IV.

A DIFFICULTY AT CHRISTMAS.

How many rivers we crossed on the night of the 22nd December, 1863, on our road along the "shore line" from Boston, in the commonwealth of Massachusetts-pray mark the word "commonwealth :" in all public documents, advertisements, and the like, the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers never fail to keep before the eyes of the citizens an assertion of State rights, internal sovereignty, supremacy, independence, and so forth—I cannot now rightly determine. My guide-books were packed, and my maps snugly rolled up, preparatory for that trip into Canada, where, upon British soil, I spent Christmas-day. Nor, I am afraid, had I been told the names of all the rivers, would the information prove of much avail to me at this moment. I have a bad memory for figures. No less a personage than a United States judge interrogated me lately respecting the tonnage of the port of Liverpool. I broke down shamefully. I was out of my reckoning, I fancy, about eighty thousand tons. But consolation was my portion when my questioner confidentially hinted that he, too, had no head for statistics; and that, happening once in England to be asked at a dinner party, by a distinguished savant, what was the death ratio in

his native State, he answered boldly and at hazard, "one in forty-seven," being entirely ignorant as to whether it were actually one in a million or one in two.

There were many rivers, I am certain, across which our train was ferried, and in all those rivers there was ice. Did we cross the Penobscot? I think so; but, at all events, you will be enabled to correct me by the aid of a gazetteer. When the train is slidden on to the deck of a ferry steamer the dreadful jarring and jolting of American railway locomotion temporarily cease. You feel no more the land-sickness -quite as agonising sometimes as that of the sea-the wheel-nausea leaves you; you glide along softly, smoothly, quietly. Last night, however, the water passage was of no dulcet kind. I could hear the ice spitefully backbiting us and digging into our ribs as we sped along; I could hear it cracking and groaning, "like noises in a swound." Railway traffic, when there is water in the way, is fast becoming beset with tribulation. Yesterday's night train from New York to Boston was half a dozen hours late. The ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around. We were more fortunate, and made the dépôt in Twenty-seventh Street, New York, by half-past six in the morning, having left Boston at half-past eight the previous night. We had accomplished a journey of two hundred and thirty miles, or thereabouts, in ten hours. No very great pace, perhaps, but tolerable. If you have hitherto thought that the most go-a-head people in creation run railway trains that can equal our Brighton or Didcot expresses in speed, you are mistaken. The average rate in the United States is twenty miles an hour; but I