The special joy of our trip lay in having travelled the line when it was new and, like the Canada of those days, not much believed in, when all the high and important officials, whose little fingers unhooked cars, were also small and disregarded.  To-day, things, men, and cities were different, and the story of the line mixed itself up with the story of the country, the while the car-wheels clicked out, ’John Kino—­John Kino!  Nagasaki, Yokohama, Hakodate, Heh!’ for we were following in the wake of the Imperial Limited, all full of Hongkong and Treaty Ports men.  There were old, known, and wonderfully grown cities to be looked at before we could get away to the new work out west, and, ’What d’you think of this building and that suburb?’ they said, imperiously.  ’Come out and see what has been done in this generation.’

The impact of a Continent is rather overwhelming till you remind yourself that it is no more than your own joy and love and pride in your own patch of garden written a little large over a few more acres.  Again, as always, it was the dignity of the cities that impressed—­an austere Northern dignity of outline, grouping, and perspective, aloof from the rush of traffic in the streets.  Montreal, of the black-frocked priests and the French notices, had it; and Ottawa, of the grey stone palaces and the St. Petersburg-like shining water-frontages; and Toronto, consumingly commercial, carried the same power in the same repose.  Men are always building better than they know, and perhaps this steadfast architecture is waiting for the race when their first flurry of newly-realised expansion shall have spent itself, and the present hurrah’s-nest of telephone poles in the streets shall have been abolished.  There are strong objections to any non-fusible, bi-lingual community within a nation, but however much the French are made to hang back in the work of development, their withdrawn and unconcerned cathedrals, schools, and convents, and one aspect of the spirit that breathes from them, make for good.  Says young Canada:  ’There are millions of dollars’ worth of church property in the cities which aren’t allowed to be taxed.’  On the other hand, the Catholic schools and universities, though they are reported to keep up the old medieval mistrust of Greek, teach the classics as lovingly, tenderly, and intimately as the old Church has always taught them.  After all, it must be worth something to say your prayers in a dialect of the tongue that Virgil handled; and a certain touch of insolence, more magnificent and more ancient than the insolence of present materialism, makes a good blend in a new land.

I had the good fortune to see the cities through the eyes of an Englishman out for the first time.  ‘Have you been to the Bank?’ he cried.  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’ ’What’s the matter with the Bank?’ I asked:  for the financial situation across the Border was at that moment more than usual picturesque.  ‘It’s wonderful!’ said he; ’marble