circular apse; its portal, built of hewn stone, was composed of two designs, one Tuscan, the other Doric; the latter was surmounted by a triangular pediment.  This beautiful entrance, erected in 1722, according to the plans of Chaussegros de Lery, royal engineer, was flanked on the right side by a square tower crowned by a campanile, from the summit of which rose a beautiful cross with fleur-de-lis twenty-four feet high.  This church was built in the axis of Notre-Dame Street, and a portion of it on the Place d’Armes; it measured, in the clear, one hundred and forty feet long, and ninety-six feet wide, and the tower one hundred and forty-four feet high.  It was razed in 1830, and the tower demolished in 1843.”

Montreal continued to progress, and therefore to build.  The Sulpicians, finding themselves cramped in their old abode, began in 1684 the construction of a new seigniorial and chapter house, of one hundred and seventy-eight feet frontage by eighty-four feet deep.  These vast buildings, whose main facade faces on Notre-Dame Street, in front of the Place d’Armes, still exist.  They deserve the attention of the tourist, if only by reason of their antiquity, and on account of the old clock which surmounts them, for though it is the most ancient of all in North America, this clock still marks the hours with average exactness.  Behind these old walls extends a magnificent garden.

The spectacle presented by Ville-Marie at this time was most edifying.  This great village was the school of martyrdom, and all aspired thereto, from the most humble artisan and the meanest soldier to the brigadier, the commandant, the governor, the priests and the nuns, and they found in this aspiration, this faith and this hope, a strength and happiness known only to the chosen.  From the bosom of this city had sprung the seventeen heroes who gave to the world, at the foot of the Long Sault, a magnificent example of what the spirit of Christian sacrifice can do; to a population which gave of its own free will its time and its labour to the building of a temple for the Lord, God had assigned a leader, who took upon his shoulders a heavy wooden cross, and bore it for the distance of a league up the steep flanks of Mount Royal, to plant it solemnly upon the summit; within the walls of the seminary lived men like M. Souart, physician of hearts and bodies, or like MM.  Lemaitre and Vignal, who were destined to martyrdom; in the halls of the hospital Mlle. Mance vied with Sisters de Bresoles, Maillet and de Mace, in attending to the most repugnant infirmities or healing the most tedious maladies; last but not least, Sister Bourgeoys and her pious comrades, Sisters Aimee Chatel, Catherine Crolo, and Marie Raisin, who formed the nucleus of the Congregation, devoted themselves with unremitting zeal to the arduous task of instruction.