ve been in for some ten minutes, we undoubtedly may; and then we
mount the ramparts and peer into Labrador and Hudson's Bay and the
North Pole, and, turning to a softer sky, gaze from a "foreign clime"
upon our own dear land, home of freedom, hope of the nations, eye-sore
of the Devil, rent by one set of his minions, and ridiculed by another,
but coming out of her furnace-fires, if God please and man will,
heartier and holier, because freer and truer, than ever before. O my
country, beautiful and beloved, my hope, my desire, my joy, and my
crown of rejoicing, immeasurably dearer in the agony of your bloody
sweat than in the high noon of your proud prosperity! standing for the
first time beyond your borders, and looking upon you from afar, now and
forevermore out of a full heart I breathe to you benedictions.

PART IV.

Down the St. Lawrence in a steamer, up the St. Lawrence on the maps, we
sail through another day full of eager interest. Everything is fresh,
new, novel. Is it because we are in high latitudes that the river and
the country look so high? I could fancy that we are on a plateau,
overlooking a continent. Now the water expands on all sides like an
ocean meeting the sky, and now we are sailing through hay-fields and
country orchards, as if the St. Lawrence had taken a turn into our
back-yard. We hug the Canada shore, and thick woods come down the banks
dipping their summer tresses in the cool Northern river,--broad
pasture-lands stretch away, away from river to sky,--brown, dubious
villages sail by at long intervals. On the distant southern shore
America has stationed her outposts, and unfrequent spires attest a
civilized, if remote life. In the sunny day all things are sunny, save
when a Claude Lorraine glass lends a dark, rich mystery to every hill
and cloud. The Claude Lorraine glass is a rara avus, and not only
gives new lights to the scenery, but brings out the human nature on
board in great force. The Anakim tells us of one man who asked him in
a confidential aside, if it was a show, whereat we all laugh. Even I
laugh at the man's ignorance,--I, a thief, an assassin, a traitor, who
six weeks ago had never heard of a Claude Lorraine glass; but nobody
can tell who has not tried it how much credit one gets for extensive
knowledge, if only he holds his tongue. In all my life I am afraid I
shall never learn as much as I have been inferred to know simply
because I kept still.

Down the St. Law