"Came in to breakfast."
"Didn't you tell the clerk you would not take his carriage?"
"No."
"Didn't you tell the other man you would take his?"
"No."
"What DID you do?"
"Let it work. Don't be in a hurry. Give a thing time to work."
"And suppose it should work you out of any carriage at all?"
"No danger." And to be sure, when we had finished breakfast, the three-dollar hack was there awaiting our pleasure. Our pleasure was to drive out into the British possessions, first around the mountain, which is quite a mountain for a villa, though nothing to speak of as a mountain, with several handsome residences on its sides, and a good many not so handsome; but the mountain is a pet of Montreal, and, as I said, quite the thing for a cockney mountain. Then we went to the French Cathedral, which is, I believe, the great gun of ecclesiastical North America, but it hung fire with me. It was large, but not great. There was no unity. It was not impressive. It was running over with frippery,—olla podrida cropping out everywhere. It confused you. It distracted you. It wearied you. You sighed for somewhat simple, quiet, restful. The pictures were pronounced poor. I don't know whether they were or not. I never can tell a picture as a cook tells her mince-pie meat, by tasting it. One picture is a revealer and one is a daub; but they are alike to me at first glance. For a picture has an individuality all its own. You must woo it with tender ardor, or it will not yield up its heart. The chance look sees only color and contour; but as you gaze the color glows, the contour throbs, the hidden soul heaves the inert canvas with the solemn palpitations of life. Art is dead no longer, but informed with divine vitality. There is no picture but Hope crowned and radiant, or pale and patient Sorrow, or the tender sanctity of Love. The landscape of the artist is neither painting nor nature, but summer fields and rosy sunsets over-flooded with his own inward light. Only from her Heaven-anointed monarch, man, can Nature receive her knightly accolade. And shall one detect the false or recognize the true by the minute-hand? I suppose so, since some do. But I cannot. People who live among the divinities may know the goddess, for all her Spartan arms, her naked knee, and knotted robe; but I, earth-born among earth-born, must needs behold the auroral blush, the gliding gait, the flowing vestment, and the divine odor of her purple hair.
In the vestibule of the French Cathedral, I believe it is, you will behold a heart-rending sight in a glass case, namely, a group of children, babies in long clothes and upwards, in a dreadful state of being devoured by cotton-flannel pigs. Their poor little white frocks are stained with blood, and they are knocked about piteously in various stages of mutilation. A label in front informs you that certain innocents in certain localities are subject to this shocking treatment; and you are earnestly conjured to drop your penny or your pound into the box, to rescue them from a fate so terrible. You must be a cannibal if you can withstand this appeal. Suffering that you only hear of, you can forget, but suffering going on right under your eyes is not so easily disposed of.