lasting. It is a place not to be forgotten or mixed up in the mind
with other places, or altered for a moment in the crowd of scenes a
traveller can recall. Apart from the realities of this most
picturesque city, there are associations clustering about it which
would make a desert rich in interest. The dangerous precipice along
whose rocky front Wolfe and his brave companions climbed to glory; the
Plains of Abraham, where he received his mortal wound; the fortress so
chivalrously defended by Montcalm; and his soldier's grave, dug for
him when yet alive, by the bursting of a shell, are not the least
among them, or among the gallant incidents of history. That is a noble
monument too, and worthy of two great nations, which perpetuates the
memory of both brave Generals, and on which their names are jointly
written.

"The city is rich in public institutions and in Catholic churches and
charities, but it is mainly in the prospect from the site of the Old
Government House and from the Citadel, that its surpassing beauty
lies. The exquisite expanse of country, rich in field and forest,
mountain-heights and water, which lies stretched out before the view,
with miles of Canadian villages, glancing in long white streaks, like
veins along the landscape; the motley crowd of gables, roofs and
chimney tops in the old hilly town immediately at hand; the beautiful
St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight; and the tiny
ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks
like spiders' webs against the light, while casks and barrels on their
decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners become so many puppets; all
this framed by a sunken window [1] in the fortress and looked at from
the shadowed room within, forms one of the brightest and most
enchanting pictures that the eye can rest upon." (Dickens' _American
Notes_.)