I remained several days at Montreal, examining the lions, and making the most of my brief stay. Here are living a knot of Southern families in a sort of American Siberia, at a very comfortable hotel, who nurse their wrath against the Yankee to keep it warm and sustain each other’s spirits. They form a nucleus for sympathising society to cluster around, and so germinate into innocent little balls, sleigh-parties, and occasional matrimonial engagements. “Waiting for his regiment,” too, was old General Bell--the veteran who saw his first shot fired in the Peninsula, and his last, forty-four years afterwards, before Sebastopol. There were parades of the 47th Regiment and inspection-drills on the St. Lawrence in snow-shoes; and Penn marched out his Armstrongs in beautiful order, on their sleighs, for all to see. The position of this fine city leaves it open to attack from the American frontier, which is so near that the blue tops of the mountain ridges of the bordering States can be seen on a clear day. The rail from the centre of New York runs direct to it, through the arsenal and fort of Rouse’s Point on Lake Champlain; and there are two other lines converging on it, so that an enormous force could be swiftly sent against it. The frontier is here a mere line on the map, so drawn as to leave the head of Lake Champlain and Rouse’s Point in the hands of the Americans. Its importance, its beauty, and the feeling of the inhabitants would render it tempting to the Northern armies; and the fierce, relentless, and destructive spirit which has been evoked in their civil war, might lead them to destroy all that is valuable and handsome in a city which stands in strong contrast to the hideousness of American towns, if they were, as of old, obliged to abandon the city. The quays of Montreal are of imperial beauty, and would reflect credit on any city in Europe. They present a continuous line of cut-stone from the Lachine Canal along the river-front before the city, leaving a fine broad mall or esplanade between the water’s edge and the houses. The public buildings, built of solid stone, in which a handsome limestone predominates, are of very great merit. Churches, court-houses, banks, markets, hospitals, colleges, all are worthy of a capital; and these would present a very different appearance to an invader from that which was offered by the poverty-stricken and insignificant Montreal of 1812.