Gala-Days [44]
to be beggarly, and becomes traffic overlaid with grace, the acanthus capital surmounting the fluted shaft. We meet also continual dog-carts, something like the nondescript which "blind Carwell" used to drag. Did you never see it? Well, then, like the cart in which the ark went up to Kirjath-jearim. Now you must know. Stubborn two-wheeled vehicles, with the whole farm loaded into the body, and the whole family on the seat. Here comes one drawn by a cow, not unnatural. Unnatural! It is the key-note of the tune. Everything is cow-y,--slow and sure, firm, but not fast, kindly, sunny, ruminant, heavy, lumbering, basking, content. Calashes also we meet,--a cumbrous, old-fashioned "one-hoss shay," with a yellow body, a suspicion of springlessness, wheels with huge spokes and broad rims, and the driver sitting on the dash-board. Now we are at the Falls of Montmorency. If you would know how they look, go and see them. If you have seen them, you don't need a description; and if you have not seen them, a description would do no good. From the Falls, if you are unsophisticated, you will resume your carriage and return to the city; but if you are au fait, you will cross the high-road, cross the pastures, and wind down a damp, mossy wood-path to the steps of Montmorency,--a natural phenomenon, quite as interesting as, and more remarkable than, the Falls,-- especially if you go away without seeing it. Any river can fall when it comes to a dam. In fact, there is nothing for it to do but fall; but it is not every river that can carve out in its rage such wonderful stairways as this,--seething and foaming and roaring and leaping through its narrow and narrowing channel, with all the turbulence of its fiery soul unquelled, though the grasp of Time is on its throat, silent, mighty, irresistible.
Montmorency,--Montmorenci,--sweet and storied name! You, too, have received the awful baptism. Blood has mingled with your sacrifices. The song of your wild waves has been lost in the louder thunders of artillery, and the breezes sweeping through these green woods have soothed the agonies of dying men. Into one heart this ancient name, heavy with a weight of disaster and fancied disgrace, sank down like lead,--a burden which only death could cast off, only victory destroy; and death came hand in hand with victory.
Driving home, we take more special note of what interested us aggressively before,--Lord Elgin's residence,--the house occupied by the Duke of Kent when a young man in the army here, long I suppose before the throne of England placed itself at the end of his vista. Did the Prince of Wales, I wonder, visit this place, and, sending away his retinue, walk slowly alone under the shadows of these sombre trees, striving to bring back that far-off past, and some vague outline of the thoughts, the feelings, the fears and fancies of his grandfather, then, like himself, a young man, but, not like himself, a fourth son, poor and an exile, with no foresight probably of the exaltation that awaited his line,--his only child to be not only the lady of his land, but our lady of the world,--a warm-hearted woman worthily seated on the proud throne of Britain,--a noble and great-souled woman, in whose sorrow nations mourn, for whose happiness nations pray,--whose name is never spoken in this far-off Western world but with a silent blessing. Another low-roofed, many-roomed, rambling old house I stand up in the carriage to gaze at lingeringly with longing, misty eyes,-- the sometime home of Field Marshal the Marquis de Montcalm. Writing now of this in the felt darkness that pours up from abandoned Fredericksburg, fearing not what the South may do in its exultation, but what the North may do in its despondency, I understand, as I understood not then, nor ever before, what comfort came to the dying hero in the certain thought, "I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec."
Now again we draw near the city whose thousands of silver (or perhaps tin) roofs dazzle our eyes with their resplendence, and I have an indistinct impression
Montmorency,--Montmorenci,--sweet and storied name! You, too, have received the awful baptism. Blood has mingled with your sacrifices. The song of your wild waves has been lost in the louder thunders of artillery, and the breezes sweeping through these green woods have soothed the agonies of dying men. Into one heart this ancient name, heavy with a weight of disaster and fancied disgrace, sank down like lead,--a burden which only death could cast off, only victory destroy; and death came hand in hand with victory.
Driving home, we take more special note of what interested us aggressively before,--Lord Elgin's residence,--the house occupied by the Duke of Kent when a young man in the army here, long I suppose before the throne of England placed itself at the end of his vista. Did the Prince of Wales, I wonder, visit this place, and, sending away his retinue, walk slowly alone under the shadows of these sombre trees, striving to bring back that far-off past, and some vague outline of the thoughts, the feelings, the fears and fancies of his grandfather, then, like himself, a young man, but, not like himself, a fourth son, poor and an exile, with no foresight probably of the exaltation that awaited his line,--his only child to be not only the lady of his land, but our lady of the world,--a warm-hearted woman worthily seated on the proud throne of Britain,--a noble and great-souled woman, in whose sorrow nations mourn, for whose happiness nations pray,--whose name is never spoken in this far-off Western world but with a silent blessing. Another low-roofed, many-roomed, rambling old house I stand up in the carriage to gaze at lingeringly with longing, misty eyes,-- the sometime home of Field Marshal the Marquis de Montcalm. Writing now of this in the felt darkness that pours up from abandoned Fredericksburg, fearing not what the South may do in its exultation, but what the North may do in its despondency, I understand, as I understood not then, nor ever before, what comfort came to the dying hero in the certain thought, "I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec."
Now again we draw near the city whose thousands of silver (or perhaps tin) roofs dazzle our eyes with their resplendence, and I have an indistinct impression