THE BATTLE OF QUEBEC

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS is an American author, editor, and poet. His novels illustrate his belief that what is called "realism" in literature is preferable to romance.

NOTE. This extract is from "Their Wedding Journey." The capture of Quebec took place in the year 1759, during the French and Indian 5 War. The English forces were under General Wolfe, the French under General Montcalm.

The fashionable suburban cottages and places of Quebec are on the St. Louis Road leading northward to the old battle ground and beyond it; but these face chiefly 10 toward the rivers St. Lawrence and St. Charles, and lofty hedges and shrubbery hide them in an English seclusion from the highway; so that the visitor, as he rides along, may uninterruptedly meditate whatever emotion he will for the scene of Wolfe's death.

15

His loftiest emotion will want the noble height of that heroic soul, who must always stand forth in history a figure of beautiful and singular distinction, admirable alike for the sensibility and daring, the poetic pensiveness, and the martial ardor that mingled in him and taxed his 20 feeble frame with tasks greater than it could bear.

The whole story of the capture of Quebec is full of romantic splendor and pathos. Her fall was a triumph for all the English-speaking race, and to us Americans,

long scourged by the cruel Indian wars plotted within her walls or sustained by her strength, such a blessing as was hailed with ringing bells and blazing bonfires throughout the colonies; yet now we cannot think without pity of 5 the hopes extinguished and the labors brought to naught in her overthrow.

That strange colony of priests and soldiers, of martyrs and heroes, of which she was the capital, willing to perish for an allegiance to which the mother country was indif10 ferent, and fighting against the armies with which England was prepared to outnumber the whole Canadian population, is a magnificent spectacle; and Montcalm laying down his life to lose Quebec is not less affecting than Wolfe dying to win her.

15

The heart opens toward the soldier who recited, on the eve of his costly victory, the "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," which he would "rather have written than beat the French to-morrow"; but it aches for the defeated general, who, hurt to death, answered, when told how 20 brief his time was, "So much the better; then I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec."

In the city for which they perished their fame has never been divided. The English have shown themselves very generous victors; perhaps nothing could be alleged 25 against them but that they were victors.

A shaft common to Wolfe and Montcalm celebrates them both in the Governor's Garden; and in the chapel

of the Ursuline Convent a tablet is placed, where Montcalm died, by the same conquerors who raised to Wolfe's memory the column on the battle field.

A dismal prison covers the ground where the hero fell, and the monument stands on the spot where Wolfe 5 breathed his last, on ground lower than the rest of the field; the friendly hollow that sheltered him from the

5

fire of the French troops dwarfs his monument; yet it is sufficient, and the simple inscription, "Here died Wolfe victorious," gives it a dignity which many cubits of added stature could not bestow.

I have heard men who fought in many battles say that the recollection was like a dream to them; and what can the merely civilian imagination do on the Plains of Abraham, with the fact that there, more than a century ago, certain thousands of Frenchmen marched out, on a bright 10 September morning, to kill and maim as many Englishmen?

This ground, so green and soft with grass beneath the feet, was it once torn with shot and soaked with the blood of men? Did they lie here in ranks and heaps, the miserable slain, for whom tender hearts away yonder over 15 the sea were to ache and break? Did the wretches that fell wounded stretch themselves here, and writhe beneath the feet of friend and foe, or crawl away for shelter into little hollows and behind bushes and fallen trees? Did he whose soul was so full of noble and sublime impulses 20 die here, shot through like some ravening beast?

The loathsome carnage, the shrieks, the din of arms, the cries of victory, -I vainly strive to conjure up some image of it all; and, God be thanked, horrible specter! that, fill the world with sorrow as thou wilt, thou still 25 remainest incredible in its moments of sanity and peace.

Adapted.

"Elegy written in a Country Churchyard": by Gray, an English poet. See page 452. — Plains of Abraham: the scene of the battle in which Wolfe fell.

5

10

THE WATER LILY

JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE

JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE (1847- ) is a Boston journalist of Irish birth. He is the author of several stirring ballads.

In the slimy bed of a sluggish mere

Its root had humble birth,

And the slender stem that upward grew
Was coarse of fiber and dull of hue,

With naught of grace or worth.

The gelid fish that floated near
Saw only the vulgar stem.

The clumsy turtle paddling by,

The water snake with his lidless eye, -
It was only a weed to them.

But the butterfly and the honeybee,

The sun and sky and air,

They marked its heart of virgin gold
In the satin leaves of spotless fold,

And its odor rich and rare.

So the fragrant soul in its purity,

To sordid life tied down,

May bloom to heaven, and no man know,
Seeing the coarse, vile stem below,

How God hath seen the crown.