e
constitution of the great nation which now spreads over their country.
No trace of their blood, language, or manners may be found among their
haughty successors. As certainly as their magnificent forests fell
before the advancing tide of civilization, they fell also. Neither the
kindness nor the cruelty of the white man arrested or hastened their
inevitable fate. They withered alike under the Upas-shade of European
protection and before the deadly storm of European hostility. As the
snow in spring they melted away, stained, tainted, trampled down.

The closing scene of French dominion in Canada was marked by
circumstances of deep and peculiar interest. The pages of romance can
furnish no more striking episode than the battle of Quebec. The skill
and daring of the plan which brought on the combat, and the success and
fortune of its execution, are unparalleled. There a broad, open plain,
offering no advantages to either party, was the field of fight. The
contending armies were nearly equal in military strength, if not in
numbers. The chiefs of each were men already of honorable fame. France
trusted firmly in the wise and chivalrous Montcalm; England trusted
hopefully in the young and heroic Wolfe. The magnificent stronghold
which was staked upon the issue of the strife stood close at hand. For
miles and miles around, the prospect extended over as fair a land as
ever rejoiced the sight of man; mountain and valley, forest and waters,
city and solitude, grouped together in forms of almost ideal beauty.

The strife was brief, but deadly. The September sun rose upon two
gallant armies arrayed in unbroken pride, and noon of the same day saw
the ground where they had stood strewn with the dying and the dead.
Hundreds of the veterans of France had fallen in the ranks, from which
they disdained to fly; the scene of his ruin faded fast from Montcalm's
darkening sight, but the proud consciousness of having done his duty
deprived defeat and death of their severest sting. Not more than a
musket-shot away lay Wolfe; the heart that but an hour before had
throbbed with great and generous impulse, now still forever. On the face
of the dead there rested a triumphant smile, which the last agony had
not overcast; a light of unfailing hope, that the shadows of the grave
could not darken.

The portion of history here recorded is no fragment. Within a period
comparatively brief, we see the birth, the growth, and the catastrophe
of a nation