nn, ambassador at Florence: "Two days ago came letters from Wolfe,
despairing as much as heroes can despair. Quebec is well victualled,
Amherst is not arrived, and fifteen thousand men are encamped to defend
it. We have lost many men by the enemy, and some by our
friends; that is, we now call our nine thousand only seven
thousand. How this little army will get away from a much
larger, and in this season, in that country, I don't guess: yes,
I do."

Hardly were these lines written when tidings came that
Montcalm was defeated, Quebec taken, and Wolfe killed. A
flood of mixed emotions swept over England. Even Walpole
grew half serious as he sent a packet of newspapers to his
friend the ambassador. "You may now give yourself what airs you please.
An ambassador is the only man in the world whom bullying becomes.
All precedents are on your side: Persians, Greeks, Romans, always
insulted their neighbors when they took Quebec. Think how pert the
French would have been on such an occasion! What a scene! An army in
the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees
to assault a town and attack an enemy strongly intrenched
and double in numbers! The King is overwhelmed with addresses
on our victories; he will have enough to paper his palace."[813]

[Footnote 813: _Letters of Horace Walpole_, III. 254, 257 (ed. Cunningham
1857).]

When, in soberer mood, he wrote the annals of his time,
and turned, not for the better, from the epistolary style to
the historical, he thus described the impression made on the
English public by the touching and inspiring story of Wolfe's
heroism and death: "The incidents of dramatic fiction could
not be conducted with more address to lead an audience from
despondency to sudden exaltation than accident prepared to
excite the passions of a whole people. They despaired, they
triumphed, and they wept; for Wolfe had fallen in the hour
of victory. Joy, curiosity, astonishment, was painted on every
countenance. The more they inquired, the more their admiration
rose. Not an incident but was heroic and affecting."[814]
England blazed with bonfires. In one spot alone all was dark and
silent; for here a widowed mother mourned for a loving and devoted
son, and the people forbore to profane her grief with the clamor
of their rejoicings.

[Footnote 814: Walpole, _Memoirs of George II._, II. 384.]

New England had still more cause of joy than Old, and
she filled the land with jubilation. The pulpits