surrounded by a circle of friends with whom I have spent some of the
most pleasant days of my life. For the last time I welcome you as my
guests to this charming residence which I have been in the habit of
calling my home.[23] I did not, I will frankly confess it, know what
it would cost me to break this habit, until the period of my departure
approached, and I began to feel that the great interests which have so
long engrossed my attention and thoughts were passing out of my hands.
I had a hint of what my feelings really were upon this point--a pretty
broad hint too--one lovely morning in June last, when I returned to
Quebec after my temporary absence in England, and landed in the coves
below Spencerwood (because it was Sunday and I did not want to make a
disturbance in the town), and when with the greetings of the old
people in the coves who put their heads out of the windows as I passed
along, and cried 'Welcome home again,' still ringing in my ears, I
mounted the hill and drove through the avenue to the house door, I saw
the drooping trees on the lawn, with every one of which I was so
familiar, clothed in the tenderest green of spring, and the river
beyond, calm and transparent as a mirror, and the ships fixed and
motionless as statues on its surface, and the whole landscape bathed
in that bright Canadian sun which so seldom pierces our murky
atmosphere on the other side of the Atlantic. I began to think that
persons were to be envied who were not forced by the necessities of
their position to quit these engrossing interests and lovely scenes,
for the purpose of proceeding to distant lands, but who are able to
remain among them until they pass to that quiet corner of the garden
of Mount Hermon, which juts into the river and commands a view of the
city, the shipping, Point Levi, the Island of Orleans, and the range
of the Laurentine; so that through the dim watches of that tranquil
night which precedes the dawning of the eternal day, the majestic
citadel of Quebec, with its noble tram of satellite hills, may seem to