They waited demurely on the side-walk while a truck laden with raisins was driven in at the seminary of St. Sulpice, never once lifting their eyes from the ground. The soldier here, as everywhere in Canada, appeared to be put forward, and by his best foot. They were in the proportion of the soldiers to the laborers in an African ant-hill. The inhabitants evidently rely on them in a great measure, for music and entertainment. You would meet with them pacing back and forth before some guard-house or passage way, guarding, reguarding, and disregarding all kinds of law by turns, apparently for the sake of the discipline to themselves, and not because it was important to exclude anybody from entering that way. They reminded me of the men who are paid for piling up bricks and then throwing them down again. On every prominent ledge you could see Englandes hands holding the Canadas, and I judged by the redness of her knuckles that she would soon have to let go. In the rear of such a guard- house, in a large gravelled square or parade ground, called the Champ de Mars, we saw a large body of soldiers being drilled, we being as yet the only spectators. But they did not appear to notice us any more than the devotees in the church, but were seemingly as indifferent to fewness of spectators as the phenomena of nature are, whatever they might have been thinking under their helmets of the Yankees that were to come. Each man wore white kid gloves. It was one of the most interesting sights which I saw in Canada. The problem appeared to be, how to smooth down all individual protuberances or idiosyncrasies, and make a thousand men move as one man, animated by one central will, and there was some approach to success. They obeyed the signals of a commander who stood at a great distance, wand in hand, and the precision, and promptness, and harmony of their movements, could not easily have been matched. The harmony was far more remarkable than that of any quire or band, and obtained, no doubt, at a greater cost. They made on me the impression, not of many individuals, but of one vast centipede of a man, good for all sorts of pulling down;—and why not then for some kinds of building up? If men could combine thus earnestly, and patiently, and harmoniously, to some really worthy end, what might they not accomplish? They now put their hands, and partially perchance their heads, together, and the result is that they are the imperfect tools of an imperfect and tyrannical government. But if they could put their hands and heads and hearts and all together, such a cooperation and harmony would be the very end and success for which government now exists in vain—a government, as it were, not only with tools, but stock to trade with.

I was obliged to frame some sentences that sounded like French in order to deal with the market women, who, for the most part, cannot speak English. According to the guide-book the relative population of this city stands nearly thus. Two fifths are French Canadian; nearly one-fifth British Canadian; one and a half fifth English, Irish, and Scotch; somewhat less than one half fifth Germans, United States people, and others.