Then the danger was passed, and the noble city of Montreal was in full sight, lying at the foot of her dark green mountain, and lifting her many spires into the rosy twilight air:  massive and grand showed the sister towers of the French cathedral.

Basil had hoped to approach this famous city with just associations.  He had meant to conjure up for Isabel’s sake some reflex, however faint, of that beautiful picture Mr. Parkman has painted of Maisonneuve founding and consecrating Montreal.  He flushed with the recollection of the historian’s phrase; but in that moment there came forth from the cabin a pretty young person who gave every token of being a pretty young actress, even to the duenna-like, elderly female companion, to be detected in the remote background of every young actress.  She had flirted audaciously during the day with some young Englishmen and Canadians of her acquaintance, and after passing the La Chine Rapids she had taken the hearts of all the men by springing suddenly to her feet, apostrophizing the tumult with a charming attitude, and warbling a delicious bit of song.  Now as they drew near the city the Victoria Bridge stretched its long tube athwart the river, and looked so low because of its great length that it seemed to bar the steamer’s passage.

“I wonder,” said one of the actress’s adorers, a Canadian, whose face was exactly that of the beaver on the escutcheon of his native province, and whose heavy gallantries she had constantly received with a gay, impertinent nonchalance,—­“I wonder if we can be going right under that bridge?”

“No, sir!” answered the pretty young actress with shocking promptness, “we’re going right over it!”

         “’Three groans and a guggle,
          And an awful struggle,
          And over we go!’”

At this witless, sweet impudence the Canadian looked very sheepish—­for a beaver; and all the other people laughed; but the noble historical shades of Basil’s thought vanished in wounded dignity beyond recall, and left him feeling rather ashamed,—­for he had laughed too.

THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL.

The feeling of foreign travel for which our tourists had striven throughout their journey, and which they had known in some degree at Kingston and all the way down the river, was intensified from the first moment in Montreal; and it was so welcome that they were almost glad to lose money on their greenbacks, which the conductor of the omnibus would take only at a discount of twenty cents.  At breakfast next morning they could hardly tell on what country they had fallen.  The waiters had but a thin varnish of English speech upon their native French, and they spoke their own tongue with each other; but most of the meats were cooked to the English taste, and the whole was a poor imitation of an American hotel.  During their stay the same commingling of usages and races bewildered