from the iron clasp
of icy winter to kiss the balmy lips of returning summer, and to welcome
his bridal gifts of sun and shower! The trees open their leafy lids to
look at the brooks and streamlets break forth into songs of
gladness--"the birch-tree," as the old Saxon said, "becomes beautiful in
its branches, and rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro
by the breath of heaven "--the lakes uncover their sweet faces, and their
mimic shores steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the
transparent waters--far into the depths of the great forest speeds the
glad message of returning glory, and graceful fern-and soft velvet moss,
and-white wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and
wreck of last year's autumn in one great sea of foliage. There are many
landscapes which can never be painted, photographed, or described, but
which the mind carries away instinctively to look at again And again in
after-time-these are the celebrated views of the world, and they are not
easy to find. From the Queen's rampart, on the citadel of Quebec, the eye
sweeps over a greater diversity of landscape than is probably to be found
in any one spot in the universe. Blue mountain, far stretching river,
foaming cascade, the white sails of ocean ships, the black trunks of
many-sized guns, the pointed roofs, the white village nestling amidst its
fields of green, the great isle in mid-channel, the many shades of colour
from deep blue pine-wood to yellowing corn-field in what other spot on
the earth's broad bosom lie grouped together in a single glance so many
of these "things of beauty" which the eye loves to feast on and to place
in memory as joys-for ever?

I had been domiciled in Quebec for about a week, when there appeared one
morning in General Orders a paragraph commanding my presence in Montreal
to receive instructions from the military authorities relative to my
further destination. It was the long-looked-for order, and
fortune, after many frowns, seemed at length about to smile upon me. It
was on the evening of the 8th June, exactly two months after the despatch
of my cable message from the South of Ireland, that I turned my face to
the West and commenced a long journey towards the setting sun. When the
broad curves of the majestic river had shut out the rugged outline of the
citadel, and the east was growing coldly dim while the west still glowed
with the fires of sunset, I could not help feeling a thrill