saw in any town.  I believe the whole of it, or at any rate a great portion, has been paved with wood; but the boards have been worked into mud, and the ground under the boards has been worked into holes, till the street is more like the bottom of a filthy ditch than a road-way through one of the most thickly populated parts of a city.  Had Quebec in Wolfe’s time been as it is now, Wolfe would have stuck in the mud between the river and the rock before he reached the point which he desired to climb.  In the upper town the roads are not as bad as they are below, but still they are very bad.  I was told that this arose from disputes among the municipal corporations.  Everything in Canada relating to roads, and a very great deal affecting the internal government of the people, is done by these municipalities.  It is made a subject of great boast in Canada that the communal authorities do carry on so large a part of the public business, and that they do it generally so well and at so cheap a rate.  I have nothing to say against this, and, as a whole, believe that the boast is true.  I must protest, however, that the streets of the greater cities—­for Montreal is nearly as bad as Quebec—­prove the rule by a very sad exception.  The municipalities of which I speak extend, I believe, to all Canada—­the two provinces being divided into counties, and the counties subdivided into townships, to which, as a matter of course, the municipalities are attached.

From Quebec to Montreal there are two modes of travel.  There are the steamers up the St. Lawrence, which, as all the world know, is, or at any rate hitherto has been, the high-road of the Canadas; and there is the Grand Trunk Railway.  Passengers choosing the latter go toward Portland as far as Richmond, and there join the main line of the road, passing from Richmond on to Montreal.  We learned while at Quebec that it behooved us not to leave the colony till we had seen the lake and mountains of Memphremagog; and, as we were clearly neglecting our duty with regard to the Saguenay, we felt bound to make such amends as lay in our power by deviating from our way to the lake above named.  In order to do this we were obliged to choose the railway, and to go back beyond Richmond to the station at Sherbrooke.  Sherbrooke is a large village on the confines of Canada, and, as it is on the railway, will no doubt become a large town.  It is very prettily situated on the meeting of two rivers; it has three or four churches, and intends to thrive.  It possesses two newspapers, of the prosperity of which I should be inclined to feel less assured.  The annual subscription to such a newspaper, published twice a week, is ten shillings.  A sale of a thousand copies is not considered bad.  Such a sale would produce 500 pounds a year; and this would, if entirely devoted to that purpose, give a moderate income to a gentleman qualified to conduct a newspaper.  But the paper and printing must cost something, and the capital invested should receive