I wish I could address you in such strains as I have sometimes employed on similar occasions, strains suited to a festive meeting; but I confess I have a weight on my heart, and that it is not in me to be merry.  For the last time I stand before you in the official character which I have borne for nearly eight years.  For the last time I am surrounded by a circle of friends with whom I have spent some of the most pleasant days of my life.  For the last time I welcome you as my guests to this charming residence which I have been in the habit of calling my home.[13] I did not, I will frankly confess it, know what it would cost me to break this habit, until the period of my departure approached; and I began to feel that the great interests which have so long engrossed my attention and thoughts, were passing out of my hands.  I had a hint of what my feelings really were upon this point—­a pretty broad hint too—­one lovely morning in June last, when I returned to Quebec after my temporary absence in England, and landed in the Coves below Spencerwood (because it was Sunday, and I did not want to make a disturbance in the town), and when with the greetings of the old people in the Coves who put their heads out of the windows as I passed along, and cried ‘Welcome home again,’ still ringing in my ears, I mounted the hill and drove through the avenue to the house door.  I saw the dropping trees on the lawn, with every one of which I was so familiar, clothed in the tenderest green of spring, and the river beyond, calm and transparent as a mirror, and the ships fixed and motionless as statues on its surface, and the whole landscape bathed in a flood of that bright Canadian sun which so seldom pierces our murky atmosphere on the other side of the Atlantic.  I began to think that persons were to be envied who were not forced by the necessities of their position to quit these engrossing interests and lovely scenes, for the purpose of proceeding to distant lands, but who are able to remain among them until they pass to that quiet corner of the Garden of Mount Hermon, which juts into the river and commands a view of the city, the shipping, Point Levi, the Island of Orleans, and the range of Lawrentine; so that through the dim watches of that tranquil night, which precedes the dawning of the eternal day, the majestic citadel of Quebec, with its noble train of satellite hills, may seem to rest for ever on the sight, and the low murmur of the waters of St. Lawrence, with the hum of busy life on their surface, to fall ceaselessly on the ear.  I cannot bring myself to believe that the future has in store for me any interests which will fill the place of those I am now abandoning.  But although I must henceforward be to you as a stranger, although my official connection with you and your interests will have become in a few days matter of history, yet I trust that through some one channel or another, the tidings of your prosperity and progress may occasionally reach me; that I may hear from time