Hardly were these lines written when tidings came that Montcalm was defeated, Quebec taken, and Wolfe killed.  A flood of mixed emotions swept over England.  Even Walpole grew half serious as he sent a packet of newspapers to his friend the ambassador.  “You may now give yourself what airs you please.  An ambassador is the only man in the world whom bullying becomes.  All precedents are on your side:  Persians, Greeks, Romans, always insulted their neighbors when they took Quebec.  Think how pert the French would have been on such an occasion!  What a scene!  An army in the night dragging itself up a precipice by stumps of trees to assault a town and attack an enemy strongly intrenched and double in numbers!  The King is overwhelmed with addresses on our victories; he will have enough to paper his palace."[813]

[Footnote 813:  Letters of Horace Walpole, III. 254, 257 (ed.  Cunningham 1857).]

When, in soberer mood, he wrote the annals of his time, and turned, not for the better, from the epistolary style to the historical, he thus described the impression made on the English public by the touching and inspiring story of Wolfe’s heroism and death:  “The incidents of dramatic fiction could not be conducted with more address to lead an audience from despondency to sudden exaltation than accident prepared to excite the passions of a whole people.  They despaired, they triumphed, and they wept; for Wolfe had fallen in the hour of victory.  Joy, curiosity, astonishment, was painted on every countenance.  The more they inquired, the more their admiration rose.  Not an incident but was heroic and affecting."[814] England blazed with bonfires.  In one spot alone all was dark and silent; for here a widowed mother mourned for a loving and devoted son, and the people forbore to profane her grief with the clamor of their rejoicings.

[Footnote 814:  Walpole, Memoirs of George II., II. 384.]

New England had still more cause of joy than Old, and she filled the land with jubilation.  The pulpits resounded with sermons of thanksgiving, some of which were worthy of the occasion that called them forth.  Among the rest, Jonathan Mayhew, a young but justly celebrated minister of Boston, pictured with enthusiasm the future greatness of the British-American colonies, with the continent thrown open before them, and foretold that, “with the continued blessing of Heaven, they will become, in another century or two, a mighty empire;” adding in cautious parenthesis, “I do not mean an independent one.”  He read Wolfe’s victory aright, and divined its far-reaching consequence.

NOTE:  The authorities of this chapter are, in the main, the same as those of the preceding, with some additions, the principal of which is the Memoire du Sieur de Ramezay, Chevalier de l’Ordre royal et militaire de St.-Louis, cy-devant Lieutenant pour le Roy commandant a Quebec, au sujet de la Reddition de cette Ville, qui a ete suivie de la Capitulation du 18 7bre 1759 (Archives de la Marine).  To this document are appended a number of important “pieces justificatives.”  These, with the Memoire, have been printed by the Quebec Historical Society.  The letters of Vaudreuil cited in this chapter are chiefly from the Archives Nationales.