olitical destiny of the
people under their spiritual care. The universities, colleges, and
schools are mainly directed by the religious orders. The priests, as
this story has shown, have been very active and conscientious workers
from the earliest days of Canadian history.

Canada, too, has her Notre Dame de Lourdes, to whose shrine the
faithful flock by thousands. Some twenty miles east of Quebec, on the
banks of the St. Lawrence, is the church of Ste. Anne de Beaupre, or,
as the Saint is more particularly known, La bonne Ste. Anne, who has
won fame in Canada for miraculous cures for two centuries at least.

[Illustration: Old church at Bonne Ste. Anne, where miracles were
performed.]

This historic place rests under the shelter of a lofty mountain of the
Laurentides, on a little plateau which has given it the name of the
"beautiful meadow." The village itself consists of a {442} straggling
street of wooden houses, with steep roofs and projecting eaves, nearly
all devoted to the entertainment of the large assemblage that annually
resorts to this Canadian Mecca, probably some sixty thousand in the
course of the summer. Here you will see on the fete of Ste. Anne, and
at other fixed times, a mass of people in every variety of costume,
Micmacs, Hurons, and Iroquois--representatives of the old Indian tribes
of Canada--French Canadians, men, women, and children, from the valleys
of the Ottawa, and the St. Maurice, and all parts of Quebec, as well as
tourists from the United States. The handsome grey stone church--now
dignified as a "basilica"--which has been built of late years, attests
the faith of many thousands who have offered their supplications at the
shrine of La bonne Ste. Anne for centuries.[1] Piles of crutches of
every description, of oak, of ash, of pine, are deposited in every
available corner as so many votive offerings from the countless
cripples that claim to have been cured or relieved. The relic through
which all the wonderful cures are said to be effected, consists of a
part of the finger bone of Ste. Anne, which was sent in 1668 by the
Chapter of Carcassonne to Monseigneur de Laval. The church also
possesses several pictures of merit, one of them by Le Brun, presented
by the Viceroy Tracy in 1666. The situation of many of the French
Canadian {443} villages is exceedingly picturesque, when they nestle in
some quiet nook by the side of a river or bay, or overlook from some
prominent hill a nobl