Читать книгу The Fair Dominion: A Record of Canadian Impressions онлайн

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I said that Quebec was full of memories. It is well to remember that most of these are French-Canadian memories. The Englishman, at home or touring, thinks most naturally of Wolfe in connection with Quebec, and thinks with pride how that fight on the Plains of Abraham marked, in Major Wood's words, 'three of the mightiest epochs of modern times—the death of Greater France, the coming of age of Greater Britain, and the birth of the United States.' The splendid daring climb of the English army, the romantic fevered valour of its general, the suddenness and completeness of the reversal of positions, unite to make us think that never was a more glorious event, or one better calculated to appeal to men of the New World. But do not let us forget that for French Canadians—great event as it was, severing their allegiance to France for ever on the one hand, leaving them free men as never before on the other—it was only one event in a new world that was already for them (but not for us) three hundred years old. 'Here Wolfe fell.' But here also, long before Wolfe fell, Champlain stood, and French captains led valiant men on expeditions against strange insidious foes, and the Cross was carried onwards by the priests, and amid mystic voices and divinations, and slaughterings and endurances, the faith prevailed and the character of the people was formed. They have no hankering for France—these people to whom Wolfe's battle seems but one out of many. France, they think, has forsaken the Church. But they are French still—these people—and amazingly conservative in their customs and their creed. We may tell them that England—which sent out Wolfe—has given them material prosperity, equality under the law, the means of justice. They will reply, or rather they will silently think, and only an occasional Nationalist will dare to say:—