New France had no scruple in consecrating with the most awful rites of religion, an expedition whose object was the scalps of baptised men, and whose results were the massacre of women and children. The holy father himself is particular to relate the fact that he celebrated a mass before the embarkation, for the express purpose of securing the Divine blessing, and he compliments the fervour with which the savages assisted at the solemnity! He had described the English to them as a race of blasphemers, and they, at least, were not to blame for embarking in the spirit of crusaders “against black Pagans, Turks, and Saracens.” Daily, for a whole week, as the armament advanced, did the wily Jesuit land them on one of the many isles that gem the lower waters of Lake Champlain, on purpose to renew the august sacrament of the altar before their eyes: and he describes these savages as chanting the praises of the Lamb of God, with a fervour from which he augured the consummation of their character as Christians. At the end of a week, they descried with joy the French lilies as they waved over the walls of Carillon; and in order to make their approach more imposing, they immediately arranged their canoes under their ensigns, and advanced in battle array. From the height on which I stood, Montcalm beheld his allies, on a bright July morning, their hatchets and tomahawks gleaming in the sun; their standards and scalp-locks fluttering in the breeze; and their thousand paddles hurrying them through the waves of that beautiful water: such a sight as no eye will ever see again. To a nobleman fresh from the gallantries of Versailles, it must have been a spectacle full of wild and romantic interest; and the picture is altogether such a one as any imagination may delight to reproduce. Yet, when we reflect that it is even now but fourscore years and ten since such a scene was a terrible reality, how striking the reflection that it has as absolutely vanished from the earth, beyond the possibility of revival, as the display of tournaments, and the more formidable pageants of the Crusades.