d the grim signs of war and brought out the
peaceful beauty of the scene, he thought of the morrow--that where

"Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,"

would be rent by the roar of cannon, the flash of bloody steel and the
cries of the wounded and dying.

Feeling perhaps a shrinking from the great crisis which the dawn would
bring, he repeated to the officers and midshipmen within hearing a
number of the verses from the most finished poem in the English
language, Grey's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," and which had
appeared a short time before. Probably the lines on which he lingered
longest were:--

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour;
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

The last line was, alas! prophetic in his own case, and he may have had
some premonition of it, for turning to his listeners, who were to share
with him victory or defeat, he said with a wistful pathos in his young
voice, "I would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of
beating the French to-morrow."

He did not dream that for what that morrow would bring, his name, with
that of the poet he loved, would be carven among those of England's
great men in Westminster Abbey--

"Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise."

Landing in a ravine (Wolfe's Cove), which he had located by the use of a
glass--with the strategic venture at which all the world has since
wondered--in the dark hours of the same night, he, at the head of the
famous Fraser Highlanders, placed his force on the Plains of Abraham,
each man knowing it was victory or death, as there was no possibility of
retreat.

The intelligence of the landing of the British troops was first brought
to the Governor-General, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, and he had the task
of communicating the unwelcome news to Montcalm, who had hurried from
his quarters on the ramparts to ascertain what was the meaning of the
firing above the town.

On learning the situation, he bitterly exclaimed:--

"They have at least got to the weak side of this miserable garrison,
and, therefore, we must endeavour to crush them by our numbers before 12
o'clock."

Montcalm, with more courage than discretion, without waiting for de
Levis, who was twenty-eight miles away,--the v