A distinguished French littérateur, fresh from the sunny banks of the Seine, thus discourses anent the Ancient capital; we translate:—
"Few cities," says M. Marmier, [2] "offer as many striking contrasts as Quebec, a fortress and a commercial city together, built upon the summit of a rock as the nest of an eagle, while her vessels are everywhere wrinkling the face of the ocean; an American city inhabited by French colonists, governed by England, and garrisoned with Scotch regiments; [3] a city of the middle ages by most of its ancient institutions, while it is submitted to all the combinations of modern constitutional government; an European city by its civilization and its habits of refinement, and still close by, the remnants of the Indian tribes and the barren mountains of the north, a city of about the same latitude as Paris, while successively combining the torrid climate of southern regions with the severities of an hyperborean winter; a city at the same time Catholic and Protestant, where the labours of our (French) missions are still uninterrupted alongside of the undertakings of the Bible Society, and where the Jesuits driven out of our own country (France) find a place of refuge under the aegis of British Puritanism!"
An American tourist thus epitomises the sights:—
"As the seat of French power in America until 1759, the great fortress of English rule in British America, and the key of the St. Lawrence, Quebec must possess interest of no ordinary character for well- informed tourists. To the traveller, there are innumerable points and items vastly interesting and curious—the citadel and forts of Cape Diamond, with their impregnable ramparts that rival Gibraltar in strength and endurance against siege, the old walls of the city and their gates each of which has its legend of war and bloody assault and repulse, the plains of Abraham, every foot of which is commemorated with blood and battle; Wolfe's monument, where the gallant and brave soldier died with a shout of victory on his lips, the Martello towers, with their subterranean communications with the citadel; the antique churches, paintings, and all their paraphernalia, treasures, and curiosities that are religiously preserved therein, the falls of Montmorency, the natural steps. Montcalm's house, and a thousand other relics of the mysterious past that has hallowed these with all the mystic interest that attaches to antiquity, great deeds, and beautiful memories. To see all these, a tourist requires at least two days' time, and surely no one who pretends to be a traveller, in these days of rapid transit will fail to visit Quebec, the best city, the most hospitable place, and richer in its wealth of rare sights and grand old memorials. French peculiarities and English oddities, than any other city on this broad continent."
"Leaving the citadel, we are once more in the European Middle ages. Gates and posterns, cranky steps that lead up to lofty, gabled houses, with sharp French roofs of burnished tin, like those of Liège; processions of the Host; altars decked with flowers; statues of the Virgin; sabots, blouses, and the scarlet of the British lines-man,— all these are seen in narrow streets and markets that are graced with many a Cotentin lace cap, and all within forty miles of the down-east, Yankee state of Maine. It is not far from New England to Old France…. There has been no dying out of the race among the French Canadians. They number twenty times the thousand that they did 100 years ago. The American soil has left physical type, religion, language, and laws absolutely untouched. They herd together in their rambling villages, dance to the fiddle after Mass on Sundays,—as gayly as once did their Norman sires,—and keep up the fleur-de- lys and the memory of Montcalm. More French than the French are the Lower Canada habitans. The pulse-beat of the continent finds no echo here."—(Sir Charles Dilke.)
In the rosy days of his budding fame, the gifted Henry Ward Beecher discoursed as follows of the Rock City [4]:—
"Curious old Quebec!—of all the cities on the continent of America, the quaintest…. It is a populated cliff. It is a mighty rock, scarped and graded, and made to hold houses and castles which, by a proper natural law, ought to slide off from its back, like an ungirded load from a camel's back. But they stick. At the foot of the rocks, the space of several streets in width has been stolen from the river…. We landed….
"Away we went, climbing the steep streets at a canter with little horses hardly bigger than flies, with an aptitude for climbing perpendicular walls. It was strange to enter a walled city through low and gloomy gates, on this continent of America. Here was a small bit of mediaeval Europe perched upon a rock, and dried for keeping, in this north-east corner of America, a curiosity that has not its equal, in its kind, on this side of the ocean….
"We rode about as if we were in a picture-book, taming over a new leaf at each street!… The place should always be kept old. Let people go somewhere else for modern improvements. It is a shame, when Quebec placed herself far out of the way, up in the very neighbourhood of Hudson's Bay, that it should be hunted and harassed with new-fangled notions, and that all the charming inconveniences and irregularities of narrow and tortuous streets, that so delight a traveller's eyes, should be altered to suit the fantastic notions of modern people….
"Our stay in Quebec was too short by far. But it was long enough to make it certain that we shall come back again. A summer in Canada would form one of the most delightful holidays that we can imagine. We mean to prove our sincerity by our conduct. And then, if it is not all that our imagination promises, we will write again and confess."