in consequence of the discovery of ginseng in New
France, had imported some chests of tea, which the Lady de Tilly, with
instinctive perception of its utility, adopted at once as the beverage
of polite society. As yet, however, it was only to be seen upon the
tables of the refined and the affluent.

A fine service of porcelain of Chinese make adorned her table, pleasing
the fancy with its grotesque pictures,--then so new, now so familiar to
us all. The Chinese garden and summer-house, the fruit-laden trees,
and river with overhanging willows; the rustic bridge with the three
long-robed figures passing over it; the boat floating upon the water and
the doves flying in the perspectiveless sky--who does not remember them
all?

Lady de Tilly, like a true gentlewoman, prized her china, and thought
kindly of the mild, industrious race who had furnished her tea-table
with such an elegant equipage.

It was no disparagement to the Lady de Tilly that she had not read
English poets who sang the praise of tea: English poets were in those
days an unknown quantity in French education, and especially in New
France until after the conquest. But Wolfe opened the great world of
English poetry to Canada as he recited Gray's Elegy with its prophetic
line,--

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave,"

as he floated down the St. Lawrence in that still autumnal night to
land his forces and scale by stealth the fatal Heights of Abraham, whose
possession led to the conquest of the city and his own heroic death,
then it was the two glorious streams of modern thought and literature
united in New France, where they have run side by side to this day,--in
time to be united in one grand flood stream of Canadian literature.

The Bourgeois Philibert had exported largely to China the newly
discovered ginseng, for which at first the people of the flowery
kingdom paid, in their sycee silver, ounce for ounce. And his Cantonese
correspondent esteemed himself doubly fortunate when he was enabled
to export his choicest teas to New France in exchange for the precious
root.

Amelie listened to an eager conversation between the Governor and Herr
Kalm, started by the latter on the nature, culture, and use of the
tea-plant,--they would be trite opinions now,--with many daring
speculations on the ultimate conquest of the tea-cup over the wine-cup.
"It would inaugurate the third beatitude!" exclaimed the philosopher,
pressing together the tips of