The Canadian boat songs are well known for their plaintive and soothing
effect, and a very beautiful one was composed on the death of
Major-General Brock. The writer of this memoir, while sailing one
evening in the straits of Canso, in British North America--the beautiful
and picturesque scenery of which greatly increased the effect of the
words--remembers to have heard it sung by a Canadian boatman, and he
then thought that he had never listened to vocal sounds more truly
descriptive of melancholy and regret. Even the young in Canada invoked
the Muse in expression of their sympathy, and the following lines were
indited by Miss Ann Bruyeres, described as "an extraordinary child of
thirteen years old," the daughter of the general's friend,
Lieut.-Colonel. Bruyeres, of the Royal Engineers, (see page 213,) and
who died not long after him in consequence of disease contracted in the
field:

As Fame alighted on the mountain's[101] crest,
She loudly blew her trumpet's mighty blast;
Ere she repeated Victory's notes, she cast
A look around, and stopped: of power bereft,
Her bosom heaved, her breath she drew with pain,
Her favorite Brock lay slaughtered on the plain!
Glory threw on his grave a laurel wreath,
And Fame proclaims "a hero sleeps beneath."

As if to complete the double allusion to Fame in the preceding lines,
singularly enough the mournful intelligence of Sir Isaac Brock's death
was brought from Quebec to Guernsey by the ship FAME, belonging to that
island, on the 24th November, two days before it was known in London.

Sir Isaac Brock, after lying in state at the government house, where his
body was bedewed with the tears of many affectionate friends, was
interred on the 16th of October, with his provincial aide-de-camp, at
Fort George. His surviving aide-de-camp, Major Glegg, recollecting the
decided aversion of the general to every thing that bore the appearance
of ostentatious display, endeavoured to clothe the distressing ceremony
with all his "native simplicity." But at the same time there were
military honors that could not be avoided, and the following was the
order of the mournful procession,[102] "of which," wrote Major Glegg,
"I enclose a plan; but no pen can describe the real scenes of that
mournful day. A more solemn and affecting spectacle was perhaps never
witnessed. As every arrangement connected with that afflicting ceremony
fell to my lot, a second attack being hour