is seen a beaver. The figure points to the river, where there is a ship at anchor. In the back ground is a representation of Cape Diamond. The following are the legends on the seal, above-NATURA FORTIS, INDUSTRIA CRESCIT :-below-CONDITA QUEBECENSE, A. D. MDCVIII. CIVITATIS REGIMINE DONATA, A. D. MDCCCXXXIII.

tially built. The interior is well adapted for the convenience of business, and the long room has been generally admired,

Very nearly opposite to the CUSTOM HOUSE there stood anciently a barrier, where the two ways diverge, one to the steps leading to the Upper Town, and the other to the harbor. It was near this spot that the American General MONTGOMERY, and other officers, were killed by the discharge of a cannon, in his daring attack upon the Lower Town, on the last day of December, 1775.

At some distance beyond this remarkable spot, at the foot of CAPE DIAMOND, is the inclined plane from the CITADEL, which has been previously mentioned; and further still is WOLFE'S COVE, where that intrepid leader performed his extraordinary exploit, and to the astonishment of the French, succeeded in ascending the cliff, and in forming his army in battle array on the PLAINS OF ABRAHAM.

Among the recent improvements in the Lower Town, a spacious market for cattle, hay, wood, and other articles of country produce, was opened during the last year, at the west end of St. Paul Street, near the King's wood-yard.

The city of QUEBEC was incorporated by Act of the Provincial Parliament in 1833. It is divided into ten wards. The Common Council consists of twenty members, from whom the Mayor is annually chosen. The first Mayor was ELZEAR BEDARD, ESquire; and for the current year, EDOUARD CARON, Esquire.

The CORPORATION seal represents a female figure, in a sitting position, leaning upon a shield, on which is a lion passant, holding a Key. Above is a cornucopia, and on the side a bee-hive. At her feet

is seen a beaver. The figure points to the river, where there is a ship at anchor. In the back ground is a representation of Cape Diamond. The following are the legends on the seal, above-NATURA FORTIS, INDUSTRIA CRESCIT :-below-CONDITA QUEBECENSE, A. D. MDCVIII. CIVITATIS REGIMINE DONATA, A. D. MDCCCXXXIII.

CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.

THE SIEGES OF QUEBEC.

One, who is conversant only with the petty and broken lines of European geography, cannot form any adequate conception of the political importance of our impregnable fortress. Placed, as if by the most consummate art, at the very lowest point that effectually commands the navigation of the largest body of fresh water in the world, Cape Diamond holds, and must for ever hold, the keys not only of all the vast and fertile regions, drained by our magnificent river, but of the almost untrodden world between Lake Superior and the rocky mountains.-On one side the icy barriers of the north, on the other, the dangers, delays and distempers of the Mississippi will for ever secure an almost exclusive preference to the great highway of the St. Lawrence. In Quebec and Montreal, respectively, must centre the dominion and the wealth of half a continent.

Quebec has been styled the Gibraltar of America -a comparison that conveys a more correct idea of its military strength than of its commercial and political importance. Let the European reader complete the comparison by closing the Baltic, the Elbe and the Rhine, turning the Danube westward into the English channel, and placing Gibraltar so as to

command that noble stream's navigation of two thousand miles.

Quebec, moreover, derives a vast degree of relative importance from its being almost the only fortified spot in North America. Over the whole continent nature has not planted a single rival; while art in the more level districts of the south was in a great measure suspended by swamps and forests.

The spirit of the French system of American colonization appreciated fully the unrivalled advantages of Quebec, and made Cape Diamond the fulcrum of a lever that was to shake the English colonies from their foundations. Every page of the earlier history of these regions forces on the reflecting mind a fundamental distinction, between the English and the French colonies in North America. The former were planted by an intelligent people; the latter were founded by an ambitious government.

The English settlements, forming, as it were, so many mutually independent states, directed their unfettered energies into the natural channels of agriculture and commerce.-The French ones, entangled in the meshes of a net of unparallelled extent, were but the inert parts of a political machine, powerful, indeed, but unwieldy, expensive and unproductive. The French sought dominion in military power-the English cherished the spirit and enjoyed the blessings of freedom. Their fundamental distinction, while it gave France a temporary preponderance, could not fail to secure the ultimate triumph of her more enlightened, though less crafty, rival.

From the struggles between these hereditary rivals sprung most of the eventful scenes, which form the subject of this chapter; and one cannot but wonder that Quebec, the source of all the evils that afflicted