manners, and their hospitality and unfail- | married Canadians and settled here after ing kindness. the conquest. Others are orphans that were taken from some emigrant ships wrecked in the St. Lawrence. But these stragglers from the conquering race are olics by the force of their environment, and they are lost as distinctive elements, absorbed in the remarkably homogeneous nationality of the French-Canadian people. The finest type of Canadian peasant is now rare. He is a descendant of the pioneer nobles of France. After the conquest (1763) some of these noble families were too poor to follow their peers back to France; they became farmers; their facilities for education were very limited, and their descendants soon sank to the level of the peasantry about them. But they have not forgotten their birth. They are commanding figures, with features of marked character, and with much of the pose and dignity of courtiers. Some of them, still preserving the traditions of their sires, receive you with the manners a prince might have when in rough disguise. Several types of Canadians were there, each standing as a page of the country's history. There was the original Canadian, the peasant of Normandy and Brit-now conquered, made good French Cathtany, just as he was when first landed on the shores of the St. Lawrence over two hundred years ago; he has kept his material and mental traits with such extraordinary fidelity that a Canadian travelling now in those parts of France seems to be meeting his own people. He is a small, muscular man of dark complexion, with black eyes, a round head, rather impervious, and an honest face, rather heavy with inertia. He sums up the early days of Canada, when endurance and courage of no ordinary stamp were required to meet the want, the wars, and the hardships of their struggle. And his phenomenal conservatism was not a whit too strong to preserve his nationality after the conquest of Canada by a race having entirely opposite tendencies. There also was the Canadian with Indian blood; he is by no means a feeble element in the population, in either numbers or influence. He is often well marked with Indian features-high cheeks, small black eyes, and slight beard. The most characteristic specimens are called "petits brûlés," like burned stumps, black, gnarly, and angular. But now and then you meet large, fine-looking half-breeds, with a swarthy complexion warmed with Saxon blood. There were no women of low character sent to Canada in the early days, as there were to New Orleans and the Antilles; the few women who came sufficed to marry only a small portion of the colonists, so that many of the gallantly but free social enjoyment. As the last Frenchmen, and later some of the Scotch and English, engaged in the fur trade, married squaws, and founded legitimate families of half-breeds. Thus Indian blood became a regular portion of the national body; and the national policy of alliance and religious union with the savages helped the assimilation of Indian traits as well as of Indian blood. There was also the Saxon who had become a Gaul. There are Wrights, Blackburns, McPhersons, with blue eyes and red hair, who can not speak a word of English; and there are Irish tongues rolling off their brogue in French. Some of these strangers to the national body are descendants of those English soldiers who But to return to the scene before the church. The women, on arriving, went at once into the church to pray while waiting for mass to begin, but the men remained outside. As I sauntered from group to group I found the people very animated. The wits of the parish had the largest crowds about them, laughing heartily at their repartees, some were talking of horse trades, others were arranging the preliminaries of more important transactions, and others were exchanging the gossip of their respective neighborhoods. It was a scene of order 66 bell rang, the constable, wearing a red scarf, came out on the church steps: 'Come, now," said he, "come in; the mass begins." They at once moved toward the door, for the officer could arrest any one who did not attend mass. The church is a large stone edifice, built low to withstand the earthquakes; its belfry, covered with bright tin, shines resplendent over the whole parish. Indeed, the steeple is the pivot of the parish, for every department of life revolves about it. These Canadian churches are generally plain, and very large, because there is but one church in a parish, and everybody attends it. They are often rather gloomy, notwithstanding a profusion of carved pine paint greater part of its soil almost sterile, seems ed white, for they have neither good works of art nor elevating architecture, nor the mellowness of vast spaces warmed with the light of colored windows. They are belts of good land along the streams have exceptionally consistent with the doctrine been divided into little homesteads barely and the life of the people-simple, economical, austere. They are generally without any organ; but the historian of St. Paul's Bay records that a few years ago this church was furnished with a harmonium, "which replaced advantageously a 'serinette' [or hand-organ], one of whose chief defects was to repeat invariably the same airs." sufficient to support even Canadian families living with extreme economy; and now most of the unoccupied land is such as to insure the pioneer an exceptionally hard task and small pay. Hence a large part of the Canadian youths are unwilling to move into the arctic wilderness. But it is very naturally the desire of patriotic Canadians that their country should reThe sermon happened to be an excel- tain its sons; and chief among those who lent illustration of the power of the oppose emigration to our Protestant reChurch and the attitude of the people. public is the Church-the only irresistible Canada, with an arctic winter and the power of the land. The Archbishop of Quebec had issued a mandate, which the priest read and expounded in the pulpit. It recites that "emigration would stop if parents would devote to preparing new lands for their children the money now lost on luxury and intemperance. People run in debt for extravagant toilets and furniture, and to feast their friends, and to appear in public with magnificent equipages." Such criticism of a civilization made up of homespun, deal chairs, pea soup, and hay carts seems very odd to one coming from the banks of the Hudson. But it is undoubtedly justified in some cases by the relative extravagance of buying even a ribbon or a buckboard. This mandate established a society to oppose emigration and favor colonization at home; the members of it will "procure the glory of God by keeping in the paths of faith a great number of families who, in going elsewhere, expose themselves to the danger of losing their faith and of perishing eternally." The manner of the worthy priest was perhaps the most striking feature; he talked to his people with the air and the words of an absolute ruler giving orders that are beyond dispute; and he emphasized very forcibly the assertion that damnation awaits the emigrant to the United States. In discussing this subject with priests they say that their people are so thoroughly dependent on the Church and the personal influence of the priest, in every department of life, that they go all astray when deprived of his fatherly supervision. As emigration is one of the forces operating against the preservation of French-Canadian nationality, it is not surprising that the Church should oppose it vigorously. The government sent a missionary priest not long ago to the United States to exhort the half million of Canadians living among us to return to Canada and colonize Manitoba. But his success was very limited, and these Canadians are now turning their ef forts to the preservation of their nation- The Canadian farm-house where I lived ality, their faith, language, and customs, is a low building, with a steep high roof while they remain citizens of our repub-pierced by dormer-windows and two masslic. The method of organizing this colonization society throws light on the national character in regard to dependence on the Church; for the success of any popular movement, and even of an individual enterprise, depends on the favor of the parish priest. After mass we gathered again in groups in front of the church. The parents were now triumphant in the strength of their opposition to emigration, and the young people were quite ashamed and subdued. But the Sunday business was not yet done. The town-crier gathered everybody about him while he made his weekly announcements. He is still the county newspaper of Canada. But so far from being a literary emporium, he frequently can not read or write. He has, however, sufficient tongue, memory, and assurance to deliver quite a column of public and private matter. He is often unwittingly comical, his pompous air being a ludicrous contrast to the simple facts he has to tell, and the illiterate blunders of his speech. First come the official announcements, legal advertisements, sheriff's sales, police regulations, road-master's notices, new laws, etc.; then private announcements are cried out -auctions, things lost and found, opening of new stores, new professional offices, etc. Sometimes he sells a pig or a calf "for the infant Jesus," the product of the sale being given to a collection for the poor. Not long ago horse-races were advertised by him to take place on the road right after mass. If The crier this day closed his list by announcing that the parish had an insurance policy to pay to one of its citizens. It seems that a parish generally insures itself. When any one loses his buildings by fire, some one solicits subscriptions to restore them. Each neighbor hauls a stick or two; the people ask permission of the priest to work on Sunday; and after mass they assemble and erect the building. the loser be very poor, carpenters are hired to finish the work for him. A portion of the congregation went away up the northern mountain that day, and spent the afternoon raising a log house and barn. All sorts of public assemblies are held in front of the church just after mass. Indeed, Sunday is the most animated day of the week in social, industrial, and political matters as well as religious. ive chimneys, and the low eaves covered a narrow piazza. It has a venerable aspect, with its simple forms whitewashed from the top of the roof downward. The great roof gives it a hovering look; you feel that it crouches to the earth for warmth. The whole place is bald. There are no trees; the little garden, tilled always by the women, is without fruit, without shrubbery, almost without flowers: a few cabbages, onions, and tobacco are the chief luxuries. The long low thatched barn, the house, and rail fences are the only objects that diversify the farm. And the straight roads of Lower Canada run off to invisible distances, lined on each side with these bare homes about two hundred yards apart. But this austere, plain civilization has a certain charm: you respect its homeliness without dilapidation or untidiness, and you like its antique simplicity and quaintness. For everything is done by hand, slowly, carefully. The washing is done at the river, with an iron kettle, a tub, and a bench on which the clothes are pounded with a paddle. As the houses are always built close to the road, they seldom have any spring, brook, or even well near at hand. Each family draws water in a hogshead on a low cart, and fills a barrel standing near the door. My host invited a friend to take a glass of rum; the guest helped himself from the bottle, and then added to his glass a few drops of water from the pitcher. The rum must have been very weak, for he asked M. Tremblay if his water barrel had not been an old liquor cask. Cooking is often done over a few stones before the door, and the barley for soup is pearled in a large wooden mortar with a pestle shaped like a pickaxe. The interior of these homes is equally primitive. The house is rather cloistral, with its few small windows with double sashes curtained with wall-paper. Two panes in each sash are hinged as a little wicket, to be opened occasionally. Nature is thus shut out, because she wears a forbidding aspect in a Canadian winter; but unfortunately no touch of art in the house takes her place. The rooms are ceiled with pine that has turned a misty brown, and taken on the hoar of age. In the living-room are unpainted chairs, a table, a bed, a long bare bench for a sofa, and an étagère, with a doubtful assemblage of wash-basin, water-pail, slop-pail, mirror, and the family comb and brush. A large black cross on the wall is the only ornament. The parlor is provided with two beds hung with tall homespun curtains of blue and white checkered linen; breadths of carpet lie on the floor about six inches apart; it is made either of rags or of cow-hair from the tannery, dyed and spun for the woof; some chairs and a bureau stand against the wall under cheap colored prints of the Pope and the Holy Family. And there is a fine old clock reaching up to the ceiling. But it occupies neither a sheltered corner nor the post of honor at the head of the room, and all the arrangements show a remarkable lack of taste. A vial of holy water with a sprig of spruce always hangs on the wall, and the wife before stepping into bed sprinkles the sheets with it. A Protestant husband who did not relish this benediction retired first one night with an umbrella, and raised it till the Catholic shower had passed. Both rooms are heated by the long two-storied cook-stove standing in a hole in the partition; the tongs are merely pinchers to hold a coal on the smoker's pipe. They scrub the floors with a bunch of spruce boughs, and sweep with a cedar broom. The only books in the house are three school-books, WOODEN PLOUGH OF EARLY DAYS. a catechism, and their church service; and the only newspapers they have ever had they bought to use as wall-paper. The most attractive part of the house is the room in the garret where the women weave. It is well filled with irregular lots of wool, skeins of yarn, three spinning-wheels, a side or two of leather, bundles of straw for hats, piles of woollen sheets and also of linen (some of which are over one hundred years old), rolls of cloth and of flannel, a loom, harness, some chests containing linen, and lank suits of homespun hanging from the rafters. The whole is dimly lighted by a window high up in the roof. This shadowy region is a relief from the baldness of the house; I like to sit there now and then while the women spin or weave, and sing their quaint national songs, or the austere, plain chants of their worship. Their agriculture is as primitive as their domestic economy. They reap with sickles, some of their ploughs are home-made with straps of iron on the wooden mould-boards, and their travelling vehicle is a cart with wooden springs. This, then, is a Canadian farmer's home, the product of over two centuries of French-Canadian Catholic civilization. It is bare and dull; its very material labors, performed without modern improvements, occupy all the time of its inmates; there is not even the beginning of intellectual life. And yet this civilization has many attractive features. Even its crude objects of mere utility have an air of antiquity that saves them from suggesting a rough, coarse life; they all show the marks of the hand of a man or a woman, and so express personal experience and character. This civilization rests on the labor of the hand alone, unaided by mechanical powers; and its narrow, slow, economical, but self-supporting life thus acquires something of the dignity of manhood. It is a very human civilization, as distinguished from a mechanical and commercial one. Here you come in direct contact with human needs and human efforts. This phase of life, where man stands out as in the old hand-to-hand encounter, is a strange contrast to our existence, where man seems to retire behind his engines and improvements. These Canadian scenes are a gallery of Millet's pictures, where rustic homely figures stand in quaint, subdued, harmonious surroundings. But the suffering that artist sees in peasant life is not found in these faces. And the charm of it all is quite subtle; no attractive accessories draw the attention-your undivided sympathy goes straight to the spinners and reapers. Moreover, this civilization has the novelty of antiquity, for it is the life of the Middle Ages in the nineteenth century. The character of the habitant is in perfect harmony with his patriarchal existence. This family represents fairly the |