British mothers of Canadian sons!—­learn to feel for their country the same enthusiasm which fills your hearts when thinking of the glory of your own.  Teach them to love Canada—­to look upon her as the first, the happiest, the most independent country in the world!  Exhort them to be worthy of her—­to have faith in her present prosperity, in her future greatness, and to devote all their talents, when they themselves are men, to accomplish this noble object.  Make your children proud of the land of their birth, the land which has given them bread—­the land in which you have found an altar and a home; do this, and you will soon cease to lament your separation from the mother country, and the loss of those luxuries which you could not, in honor to yourself, enjoy; you will soon learn to love Canada as I now love it, who once viewed it with a hatred so intense that I longed to die, that death might effectually separate us for ever.

But, oh! beware of drawing disparaging contrasts between the colony and its illustrious parent.  All such comparisons are cruel and unjust;—­you cannot exalt the one at the expense of the other without committing an act of treason against both.

But I have wandered away from my subject into the regions of thought, and must again descend to common work-a-day realities.

The pleasure we experienced upon our first glance at Quebec was greatly damped by the sad conviction that the cholera-plague raged within her walls, while the almost ceaseless tolling of bells proclaimed a mournful tale of woe and death.  Scarcely a person visited the vessel who was not in black, or who spoke not in tones of subdued grief.  They advised us not to go on shore if we valued our lives, as strangers most commonly fell the first victims to the fatal malady.  This was to me a severe disappointment, who felt an intense desire to climb to the crown of the rock, and survey the noble landscape at my feet.  I yielded at last to the wishes of my husband, who did not himself resist the temptation in his own person, and endeavored to content myself with the means of enjoyment placed within my reach.  My eyes were never tired of wandering over the scene before me.

It is curious to observe how differently the objects which call forth intense admiration in some minds will affect others.  The Scotch dragoon, Mackenzie, seeing me look long and intently at the distant Falls of Montmorency, drily observed,—­

“It may be a’ vera fine; but it looks na’ better to my thinken than hanks o’ white woo’ hung out o’re the bushes.”

“Weel,” cried another, “thae fa’s are just bonnie; ’tis a braw land, nae doubt; but no’ just so braw as auld Scotland.”

“Hout man! hauld your clavers, we shall a’ be lairds here,” said a third; “and ye maun wait a muckle time before they wad think aucht of you at hame.”