"Then there is another song," said Picton, lighting his pipe with coal and tongs; "'Wolfe and Montcalm'—you must know that," he continued, addressing the old fisherman. But the ancient trilobite did not know it; indeed, he was not a singer, so Picton trolled lustily forth—
"'He lifted up his head,
While the cannons did rattle,
To his aid de camp he said,
'How goes the battail?'
The aid de camp, he cried,
''Tis in our favor;'
'Oh! then,' brave Wolfe replied,
'I die with pleasure!'"
"There," said Picton, throwing himself back upon the warm and cosy furs, "I am at the end of my rope, gentlemen. Sing away, some of you," and the traveller drew a long spiral of smoke through his tube, and ejected it in a succession of beautiful rings at the beams overhead.
"Picton," said I, "what a strange, romantic interest attaches itself to the memory of Wolfe. The very song you have sung, 'How stands the glass around,' although not written by him, for it was composed before he was born, yet has a currency from the popular belief that he sang it on the evening preceding his last battle. And, indeed, it is by no means certain that Gray's Elegy does not derive additional interest from a kindred tradition."
"What is that?" said the traveller.
"Of course you will remember it. When Gray had completed the Elegy, he sent a copy of it to his friend, General Wolfe, in America; and the story goes, that as the great hero was sitting, wrapped in his military cloak, on board the barge which the sailors were rowing up the St. Lawrence, towards Quebec, he produced the poem, and read it in silence by the waning light of approaching evening, until he came to these lines, which he repeated aloud to his officers:
'The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour'——"
Then pausing for a moment, he finished the stanza:
"'The paths of glory lead but to the grave.'"
"Gentlemen," he added, "I would rather be the writer of this poem, than the greatest conqueror the world ever produced."