There Is A Quiet, Lethargic, Old-World Air About The Country, Contrasting Strangely With The Bustling, Hurrying, Restless Progress Of Upper Canada.

Though the condition of the habitans is extremely unprofitable to themselves, it affords a short rest to the thinking and observing faculties of the stranger, overstrained as they are with taking in and contemplating the railroad progress of things in the New World.

While we admire and wonder at the vast material progress of Western Canada and the North-western States of the Union, considerations fraught with alarm will force themselves upon us. We think that great progress is being made in England, but, without having travelled in America, it is scarcely possible to believe what the Anglo-Saxon race is performing upon a new soil. In America we do not meet with factory operatives, seamstresses, or clerks overworked and underpaid, toiling their lives away in order to keep body and soul together; but we have people of all classes who could obtain competence and often affluence by moderate exertions, working harder than slaves - sacrificing home enjoyments, pleasure, and health itself to the one desire of the acquisition of wealth. Daring speculations fail; the struggle in unnatural competition with men of large capital, or dishonourable dealings, wears out at last the overtasked frame - life is spent in a whirl - death summons them, and finds them unprepared. Everybody who has any settled business is overworked. Voices of men crying for relaxation are heard from every quarter, yet none dare to pause in this race which they so madly run, in which happiness and mental and bodily health are among the least of their considerations. All are spurred on by the real or imaginary necessities of their position, driven along their headlong course by avarice, ambition, or eager competition.

The Falls of Montmorenci, which we reached after a drive of eight miles, are beautiful in the extreme, and, as the day was too cold for picnic parties, we had them all to ourselves. There is no great body of water, but the river takes an unbroken leap of 280 feet from a black narrow gorge. The scathed black cliffs descend in one sweep to the St. Lawrence, in fine contrast to the snowy whiteness of the fall. Montmorenci gave me greater sensations of pleasure than Niagara. There are no mills, museums, guides, or curiosity-shops. Whatever there is of beauty bears the fair impress of its Creator's hand; and if these Falls are beautiful on a late October day, when a chill east wind was howling through leafless trees looming through a cold, grey fog, what must they be in the burst of spring or the glowing luxuriance of summer?

We drove back for some distance, and entered a small cabaret, where some women were diligently engaged in spinning, and some men were superintending with intense interest the preparation of some soupe maigre. Their patois was scarcely intelligible, and a boy whom we took as our guide spoke no English.

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