of ten days in the opening of the summer.  But late as comes the summer to Quebec, it comes in its loveliest and most enticing form, as though it wished to atone for its long delay in banishing from such a landscape the cold tyranny of winter.  And with what loveliness does the whole face of plain, river, lake, and mountain turn from the iron clasp of icy winter to kiss the balmy lips of returning summer, and to welcome his bridal gifts of sun and shower!  The trees open their leafy lids to look at the brooks and streamlets break forth into songs of gladness—­“the birch-tree,” as the old Saxon said, “becomes beautiful in its branches, and rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro by the breath of heaven “—­the lakes uncover their sweet faces, and their mimic shores steal down in quiet evenings to bathe themselves in the transparent waters—­far into the depths of the great forest speeds the glad message of returning glory, and graceful fern-and soft velvet moss, and-white wax-like lily peep forth to cover rock and fallen tree and wreck of last year’s autumn in one great sea of foliage.  There are many landscapes which can never be painted, photographed, or described, but which the mind carries away instinctively to look at again And again in after-time-these are the celebrated views of the world, and they are not easy to find.  From the Queen’s rampart, on the citadel of Quebec, the eye sweeps over a greater diversity of landscape than is probably to be found in any one spot in the universe.  Blue mountain, far stretching river, foaming cascade, the white sails of ocean ships, the black trunks of many-sized guns, the pointed roofs, the white village nestling amidst its fields of green, the great isle in mid-channel, the many shades of colour from deep blue pine-wood to yellowing corn-field in what other spot on the earth’s broad bosom lie grouped together in a single glance so many of these “things of beauty” which the eye loves to feast on and to place in memory as joys-for ever?

I had been domiciled in Quebec for about a week, when there appeared one morning in General Orders a paragraph commanding my presence in Montreal to receive instructions from the military authorities relative to my further destination.  It was the long-looked-for order, and fortune, after many frowns, seemed at length about to smile upon me.  It was on the evening of the 8th June, exactly two months after the despatch of my cable message from the South of Ireland, that I turned my face to the West and commenced a long journey towards the setting sun.  When the broad curves of the majestic river had shut out the rugged outline of the citadel, and the east was growing coldly dim while the west still glowed with the fires of sunset, I could not help feeling a thrill of exultant thought at the prospect before me.  I little knew then the limits of my wanderings-I little thought that for many and many a day my track would lie with almost undeviating precision towards the setting sun, that summer would merge itself into autumn, and autumn darken into winter, and that still the nightly bivouac would be made a little nearer to that west whose golden gleam was suffusing sky and water.