ch he
gave at Quebec on the eve of his final departure in December, 1854.

[Sidenote: Farewell to Quebec.]

I wish I could address you in such strains as I have sometimes
employed on similar occasions, strains suited to a festive meeting;
but I confess I have a weight on my heart, and that it is not in me to
be merry. For the last time I stand before you in the official
character which I have borne for nearly eight years. For the last time
I am surrounded by a circle of friends with whom I have spent some of
the most pleasant days of my life. For the last time I welcome you as
my guests to this charming residence which I have been in the habit of
calling my home.[13] I did not, I will frankly confess it, know what
it would cost me to break this habit, until the period of my departure
approached; and I began to feel that the great interests which have so
long engrossed my attention and thoughts, were passing out of my
hands. I had a hint of what my feelings really were upon this point--a
pretty broad hint too--one lovely morning in June last, when I
returned to Quebec after my temporary absence in England, and landed
in the Coves below Spencerwood (because it was Sunday, and I did not
want to make a disturbance in the town), and when with the greetings
of the old people in the Coves who put their heads out of the windows
as I passed along, and cried 'Welcome home again,' still ringing in my
ears, I mounted the hill and drove through the avenue to the house
door. I saw the dropping trees on the lawn, with every one of which I
was so familiar, clothed in the tenderest green of spring, and the
river beyond, calm and transparent as a mirror, and the ships fixed
and motionless as statues on its surface, and the whole landscape
bathed in a flood of that bright Canadian sun which so seldom pierces
our murky atmosphere on the other side of the Atlantic. I began to
think that persons were to be envied who were not forced by the
necessities of their position to quit these engrossing interests and
lovely scenes, for the purpose of proceeding to distant lands, but who
are able to remain among them until they pass to that quiet corner of
the Garden of Mount Hermon, which juts into the river and commands a
view of the city, the shipping, Point Levi, the Island of Orleans, and
the range of Lawrentine; so t