"1774 - 9th October.

The Churchwardens return thanks to His Lordship Jean 0.

Briand, Bishop, for the present he made of the big bell, which, exclusive of its clapper, weighs 3,255 lbs. Name, LOUISE, by Messieur Montgolfier, Grand Vicaire, and Mdlle de Lery, representing its Matron. Blessed by Monsigneur Louis Masriacheau D'Esgley, coadjutor."

"1778. 28th July. Christening of the bells by M. Noel Voyer, on the 22nd July. Blessed by Sa Grandeur, Monseigneur Briand; the first weigh 1,625 lbs. - named OLIVIER GENEVIEVE - Godfather, Sa Grandeur, with Madame Chanazard wife of M Berthelot 7 yards of white damask given as a (christening) dress. The second, was called PIERRE MARIE, by M. Panet, Judge of the Court, and his wife Marie Anne Rottot; said bell weighing 1,268 lbs."

A halo of poetry hovers over some of our bells. About 1829, Adam Kidd, a son of song, hailing from Spencer Wood, - a friend of the Laird of the Manor - Hon. H M Percival, wrote some graceful lines on the Church Bells of the General Hospital Convent. This poem was published at the Herald and New Gazette office, in Montreal. In 1830, with the Huron Chief, and other poems by Kidd, and by him inscribed to Tom Moore, "the most popular, most powerful and most patriotic poet of the nineteenth century, whose magic numbers have vibrated to the heart of nations," says the Dedication.

A delightful volume has recently been put forth by a Ursuline Nun, entitled "GLIMPSES OF THE MONASTERY," in which the holy memories of the cloister blend with exquisite bits of word painting; we find in it a glowing sketch of the Convent Bells, and of the objects and scenery, surrounding the "Little World" of the Ursulines. "Marriage Bells" are of course left out.

The writer therein alludes to that short-lived bell of Madame de la Peltrie, melted in the memorable fire of the 31st December, 1650, which the pious lady used to toll, to call "the Neophytes to the waters of baptism, or the newly made Christians to Holy Mass."

(See page 113.)

(From "Trifles from my Diary.")

"GENERAL WOLFE'S STATUE," CORNER PALACE STREET

BY THE AUTHOR OF "MAPLE LEAVES."

Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum, Cum faber, incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum Maluit esse Deum. Horace, Sat I. 8.

Henry Ward Beecher begins an amusing sketch of our city with the words, "Queer old Quebec, - of all the cities on the Continent of America, the quaintest." He concludes his humorous picture by expressing the wish that it may remain so without being disturbed by the new-fangled notions of the day. Some one has observed that its walls, streets, public places, churches and old monasteries, with the legends of three centuries clinging to them, give you, when you enter under its massive gates, hoary with age, [344] the idea of an "old curiosity shop," or, as the name Henry Ward Beecher well expresses it, "a picture book, turning over a new leaf at each street." It is not then surprising that the inhabitants should have resorted not only to the pen of the historian to preserve evergreen and fragrant the historical ivy which clings to its battlements, but even to that cheap process, in use in other countries, to immortalize heroes - signboards and statues - a process recommended by high authority. We read in that curiously interesting book, "History of Signboards - "

"The Greeks honored their great men and successful commanders by erecting statues to them; the Romans rewarded their popular favorites with triumphal entries and ovations; modern nations make the portraits of their celebrities serve as signs for public-houses:

Vernon, the Butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke, Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe, Evil and good have had their tithe of talk, And filled their signpost then, like Wellesley now."

If Wolfe served as a signboard recently in Britain, he has filled the same office now close on a century in Canada, and still continues to do so. He has defied wind and weather ever since the day when the Cholette Brothers affixed to the house at the north-west corner of St. John and Palace streets a rough statue of the gallant young soldier in the year 1771, with one arm extended in the attitude of command, and pointing to the Falls of Montmorency.

Nor has Mr. de Gaspe, the author of the "Canadians of Old," thought it beneath his pen to indite an able disquisition on its origin, brimful of wealth for our antiquaries and a great deal more practical in its bearings than even Jonathan Oldbuck's great Essay on Castrametation. A Three Rivers antiquarian had attempted to establish that it was Ives Cholette who had been the sculptor of the statue in question, but our old friend (through the church registers - and through ancient and irrefutable records) showed it could neither be Ives Cholette, aged, in 1771, 10 years, nor his younger brother Hyacinthe, aged then but 8 years, who had designed this great work of art, but Cholette of another ilk. [345]

In these halycon days of old Quebec, free from municipal taxes, Fenian scares and labor strikes, when the practical joker [346] and mauvais sujets, bent on a lark, would occasionally take possession, after night-fall, of some of the chief city thoroughfares, and organize a masquerade, battering unmercifully with their heavy lanterns. Captain Pinguet's hommes de guet, - the night patrol - long before Lord Durham's blue-coated "peelers" were thought of, the historic statue would disappear sometimes for days together; and after having headed a noisy procession, decorated with bonnet rouge and one of those antique camloteen cloaks which our forefathers used to rejoice in, it would be found in the morning grotesquely propped up, either in the centre of the old Upper Town market, or in the old Picote cemetery in Couillard street [347], in that fanciful costume (a three-storied sombrero, with eye-glass and dudeen) which rendered so piquant some of the former vignettes on the Union Bank notes. I can yet recall as one of the most stirring memories of my childhood, the concern, nay, vexation, of Quebecers generally when the "General" was missing on the 16th July, 1838, from his sacred niche in Palace street, and was subsequently triumphantly replaced by the grateful citizens, - rejuvenated, repainted, revarnished, with the best materials Halifax could furnish, the "General" having been brought there by the youngsters of the "Inconstant" frigate, Captain Pring, from Quebec.

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