With upturned brow and radiant eyes,
Pointing unto the distant skies,
Whispers: "Oh, weary child of care,
Look up! thy heavenly home is there!"




MONUMENT TO IRISH EMIGRANTS.


It will be in the recollection of many of our readers that during
the famine years of 1847 and 1848 there was an unusual emigration
from Ireland to Canada and the United States. Numbers of those who
thus left their native land expired from ship fever, caused by utter
exhaustion, before they reached the American continent; others only
arrived there to die of that fatal disease. The Canadian Government
made extensive efforts to save the lives of the poor emigrants. A
large proportion were spared, but at Montreal, where the Government
erected temporary hospitals, on an immense scale, upwards of 6000 of
these poor people died. Their remains were interred close to the
hospitals, at a place that is now mainly covered with railway
buildings, and in close proximity to the point whence the Victoria
Bridge projects into the St. Lawrence. All traces of the sad events
of that disastrous period would have been obliterated but for the
warm and reverential impulses of Mr. James Hodges, the engineer and
representative of Messrs. Peto, Brassey & Betts in Canada. Through
his instrumentality, and by his encouragement, the workmen at the
bridge came to the determination of erecting a monument on the spot
where the poor Irish emigrants were interred. An enormous granite