till, old and growing
weary, though devoted as ever, he finally left Quebec on
the 9th of July. This was the second occasion on which
he had been forced to resign by unfair treatment at the
hands of those who should have been his best support. It
was infinitely worse the first time, when he was stabbed
in the back by that shameless political assassin, Lord
George Germain. But the second was also inexcusable
because there could be no doubt whatever as to which of
the incompatibles should have left his post--the replaceable
Simcoe or the irreplaceable Carleton. Yet as H.M.S.
_Active_ rounded Point Levy, and the great stronghold of
Quebec faded from his view, Carleton had at least the
satisfaction of knowing that he had been the principal
saviour of one British Canada and the principal founder
of another.

CHAPTER X

'NUNC DIMITTIS'
1796-1808

Our tale is told.

The _Active_ was wrecked on the island of Anticosti,
where the estuary of the St Lawrence joins the Gulf. No
lives were lost, and the Carletons reached Perce in Gaspe
quite safely in a little coasting vessel. Then a ship
came round from Halifax and sailed the family over to
England at the end of September, just thirty years after
Carleton had come out to Canada to take up a burden of
oversea governance such as no other viceroy, in any part
of the world-encircling British Empire, has ever borne
so long.

He lived to become a wonderful link with the past. When
he died at home in England he was in the sixty-seventh
year of his connection with the Army and in the eighty-fifth
of his age. More than any other man of note he brought
the days of Marlborough into touch with those of Wellington,
though a century lay between. At the time he received
his first commission most of the senior officers were
old Marlburians. At the time of his death Nelson had
already won Trafalgar, Napoleon had already been emperor
of the French for nearly three years, and Wellington had
already begun the great Peninsular campaigns. Carleton's
own life thus constitutes a most remarkable link between
two very different eras of Imperial history. But he and
his wife together constitute a still more remarkable link
between two eras of Canadian history which are still
farther apart. At first sight it seems almost impossible
that he, who was the trusted friend o Wolfe, and she,
who learned deportment at Versailles in the reign of
Louis Quinze, should together make up a living link