thy, indolence, mistrust, hopelessness."
At the time such comparisons were made, Upper Canada was on the very
verge of bankruptcy.

Turning to Lower Canada, we find that the financial position of the
province was very different from that of Upper Canada. The public
accounts showed an annual surplus, and the financial difficulties of the
province were caused entirely by the disputes between the executive and
the assembly which would not vote the necessary supplies. The timber
trade had grown to large proportions and constituted the principal
export to Great Britain from Quebec, which presented a scene of much
activity in the summer. Montreal was already showing its great
advantages as a headquarters of commerce on account of its natural
relations to the West and the United States. Quebec and Montreal had
each about 35,000 inhabitants. Travellers admitted that Montreal, on
account of the solidity of its buildings, generally of stone, compared
most favourably with many of the finest and oldest towns in the United
States. The Parish Church of Notre Dame was the largest ecclesiastical
edifice in America, and notable for its simple grandeur. With its
ancient walls girdling the heights first seen by Jacques Cartier, with
its numerous churches and convents, illustrating the power and wealth of
the Romish religion, with its rugged, erratic streets creeping through
hewn rock, with its picturesque crowd of red-coated soldiers of England
mingling with priests and sisters in sombre attire, or with the
_habitants_ in _etoffe du pays_,--the old city of Quebec, whose history
went back to the beginning of the seventeenth century, was certainly a
piece of mediaevalism transported from northern France. The plain stone
buildings of 1837 still remain in all their evidences of sombre
antiquity. None of the religious or government edifices were
distinguished for architectural beauty--except perhaps the English
cathedral--but represented solidity and convenience, while harmonising
with the rocks amid which they had risen.

The parliament of Lower Canada still met in the Bishop's Palace, which
was in want of repair. The old Chateau St. Louis had been destroyed by
fire in 1834, and a terrace bearing the name of Durham was in course of
construction over its ruins. It now gives one of the most picturesque
views in the world on a summer evening as the descending sun lights up
the dark green of the western hills, or brightens the tin spires and
ro