being slightly built on the sides nearest the city. Inis line of towers extends over and commands all the space between the St. Lawrence and Charles rivers. The conspicuous public edifices are the Castle of St. Lewis, the Parliament House, Court-House, General Hospital, New Exchange, the Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and St. Roch's churches, and the Trinity, St. Johns, and Methodist Chapels. The public and private edifices of the city present a singularly impressive species of Architecture, in good keeping with the war-like sublimity of the fortress-the walls are of a dark colored stone, with deep narrow windows, high sharp roofs, covered with tin, which brightly flashes back the beams of the sunwhile the entrance cut through the rocks, the gates, and the massive walls of the city, carry the mind back to the feudal ages of ditch and moat, drawbridge and tower.

The military history of Quebec, is of deep interest, and confers renown upon the names of WOLFE, and MONTCALM, and MONTGOMERY. The two former having fallen at the head of opposing armies, in the conflict on the plains of Abraham, which transferred the sovereignty of the Canadas from France to England. General Richard Montgomery is remembered with grateful emotions by his country-the United States of America. He was appointed commander-in-chief of the American force destined for the siege and assault of this formidable fortress, in the winter of 1775. He was killed on the morning of December 31st, 1775, by a discharge of artillery, loaded with grape, which swept away the head of the column he was leading to storm the eminence. The attempt proved unsuccessful, and the greater part of the American force was captured.* Quebec is one hundred and eighty miles north-east of Montreal, and four hundred from the sea. The present population is supposed to amount to about thirty thousand.

DESCRIPTION OF THE ENGRAVING.

"This scene," says Professor Silliman, "which we thought not to be exceeded in beauty by any that we saw in Canada, was sketched from the left bank of the Chau

*For a particular account of this unfortunate expedition, the reader is referred to Marshall's Life of Washington

diere river, at its mouth.* It was seen by the mildest softest light of an Indian summer afternoon, not more than two hours before sun-setting; and there was a mellowness in the tints, especially of the remoter objects, which, notwithstanding the grandeur of some of the features of the landscape, excited still stronger perceptions of beauty. These impressions were heightened by contrast with the deep black gulf, immediately below the observer, and a little to the right. This is the mouth of a very considerable river, the Chaudiere, which here coming from the south-east, pours its black waters into the deep green St. Lawrence, and is so imprisoned between very abrupt and precipitous shores, principally of rock, but overhung in part by forest, that from the right bank where the view was taken, only a part of the river is seen. Some idea of the height of these banks, will be gained by comparison with the ships, which here lie securely anchored in the Chaudiere; they are European ships in quest of lumber, and appeared to be generally of between two and three hundred tons burden.

On the right, at the distance of six or seven miles, we see Point Levi; in the middle of the extreme distance are the hills about Montmorenci, distant about twelve miles; on the smooth expanse of the river between, numberless ships are seen to repose, surrounded and tinged, by the peculiarly attempered light, of what I presume painters would call a perfect Claude Lorraine sky. On the left is Quebec, with its citadel, built on Cape Diamond, and nearer a glimpse of a part of the plains of Abraham, with some of the Martello towers. The distance is about six miles." L. B.

New-York, Nov. 1831.

On every occasion, when you discourse, think first, and look narrowly what you speak-of whom you speak -to whom you speak-how you speak-and when you speak-and what you speak, speak wisely, speak truly, lest you bring yourself into great trouble.

"Remarks made on a short tour between Hartford and Quebec, in the Autumn of 1819."-Second Edition, page 272.

THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFI❤

CULTIES;

ILLUSTRATED BY ANECDOTES.

Strength of the Passion for Knowledge. Pythagoras; Archimedes; Leibnitz, Galileo; Heyne.

The ardor with which knowledge has frequently been pursued amidst all sorts of difficulties and discouragements, is the best evidence we can offer of the strength of the passion which has sprung up and lived in circumstances so unfavorable to its growth, and therefore of the exquisite pleasure which its gratification is found to bring with it. If the permanence of any pleasure, indeed, is to be looked upon as one of the proofs of its value, there are certainly none but those of virtue and religion that can be compared with the pleasures of intellectual exertion. Nor is successful study without its moments, too, of as keen and overpowering emotion, as any other species of human enjoyment is capable of yielding. We have already seen how Newton was affected on approaching the completion of his sublime discovery; when the truth shone full upon him, and not a shade remained to create a doubt that it was indeed the truth which he had found and upon which he was gazing. Every other discoverer, or inventor, or creator of any of the great works of literature or art, has had, doubtless, his moments of similar ecstasy. The ancient Greek philosopher PYTHAGORAS is said to have been the first who found out, or at least demonstrated, the great geometrical truth that the square described on the hypothenuse, or side opposite to the right angle of a rightangled triangle, is exactly equal in area to the two squares described on the other two sides; and such was his joy, we are told, on the occasion, that he offered up a hecatomb, or sacrifice of a hundred oxen, to the gods, in testimony of his gratitude and exultation. When ARCHIMEDES, the most celebrated geometer of antiquity, discovered the method of ascertaining the specific gravities of different substances, or the comparative weights of equal bulks of each, he is said to have rushed forth naked from the bath in which he chanced to be when the idea suggested itself to him, and to have run about in that state through the streets of Syracuse, exclaiming, I have found it, I have found it! And no better example,

by the way, can be given than is afforded by this anecdote, of the manner in which the most common and apparently insignificant fact will sometimes yield to the contemplation of genius the richest produce of philosophy. We extract an account of the circumstance from the Treatise on Hydrostatics, in the Library of Useful Knowledge:

"The proposition which forms the foundation of this branch of Hydrostatics, that a solid plunged in a fluid displaces a quantity of the fluid equal to its bulk, was discovered by Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians of ancient times, in consequence of Hiero, king of Syracuse, his friend and patron, and himself an eminent philosopher, and, it needs hardly to be added, a virtuous and patriotic prince, having set him a problem to solve upon the adulteration of metals. Hiero had given a certain quantity of gold to an artist to make into a crown, and suspecting, from the lightness of the crown, that some silver had been used in making it, he begged Archimedes to investigate the matter. It is said that while this great man was intent upon the question, he chanced to observe, in bathing, the water which ran over the sides of the bath; and immediately perceiving that, as the water was equal to the bulk of his body, this would furnish him with the means of detecting the adulteration, by trying how much water a certain weight of silver displaced, how much a certain weight of gold, and how much a certain mixture of the two, he rushed out of the chamber, exclaiming, 'I have found it! I have found it!"

The illustrious LEIBNITZ, when only in his sixteenth year, conceived the brilliant idea of reducing the elements of thought to a species of alphabet, which should consist of the representatives or characters, as it were, of all our simplest ideas, and serve to express distinctly their different combinations, just as the sounds of speech are expressed by the common letters. Without attempting to maintain the practicability of this notion, it is impossible to deny that it evidenced great subtilty and originality of mind in the young metaphysician: and we can well conceive the delight with which such a conception must have been contemplated by a spirit like his, ardent in the

pursuit both of knowledge and of distinction; and beholding, as it were, in this dazzling speculation a new and untraversed continent of thought, wherein it might spend its first strength, and raise for itself immortal trophies. In a production, written many years afterhis paper on a universal language-Leibnitz himself describes to us what he calls the infantine joy which this idea brought with it, when it first suggested itself to him, filling his mind, as it did, with the hope of the great discoveries to which it promised to conduct him; and although, in the multiplicity of his subsequent pursuits, he had never been able to accomplish the high enterprise which he had so early planned, he declares that the deeper he had carried his reflections and inquiries, he had only become the more convinced of its practicability. Such allurement is there even in the veiled countenance of a new truth! But beyond all, perhaps, that a discoverer ever felt, must have been the surprise and delight of Galileo when, having turned for the first time to the heavens, the wonderful instrument which his own ingenuity had invented, he beheld that crowd of splendors which had never before revealed themselves to the eye, nor even been dreamed of by the imagination of man. While Galileo resided at Venice, a report was brought to that city that a Dutchman had presented to Count Maurice of Nassau an instrument, by means of which distant objects were made to appear as if they were near; and this was all that the rumor stated. But it was enough for Galileo. The philosopher immediately set himself to work to find out by what means the thing must have been effected; and in the course of a few hours satisfied himself that, by a certain arrangement of spherical glasses, he could repeat the new miracle. In the course of two or three days he presented several telescopes to the Senate of Venice, accompanied with a memoir on the immense importance of the instrument to science and especially to astronomy. He afterwards greatly improved his invention; and brought it to such a state of perfection, that he was in a condition to commence, by means of it, the examination of the heavens. It was then that, to his unutterable astonishment, he saw, as a celebrated French astronomer has expressed