It was on October 17th,--while Friedrich lay at Sophienthal, lamed of gout, and Soltikof had privately fixed for home (went that day week),--that this glorious bit of news reached England. It was only three days after that other, bad and almost hopeless news, from the same quarter; news of poor Wolfe's Repulse, on the other or eastern side of Quebec, July 31st, known to us already, not known in England till October 14th. Heightened by such contrast, the news filled all men with a strange mixture of emotions. "The incidents of Dramatic Fiction," says one who was sharer in it, "could not have been conducted with more address to lead an audience from despondency to sudden exultation, than Accident had here prepared to excite the passions of a whole People. They despaired; they triumphed; and they wept,--for Wolfe had fallen in the hour of victory! Joy, grief, curiosity, astonishment, were painted in every countenance: the more they inquired, the higher their admiration rose. Not an incident but was heroic and affecting." [Walpole, iii. 219.] America ours; but the noble Wolfe now not! What Pitt himself said of these things, we do not much hear. On the meeting of his Parliament, about a month hence, his Speech, somebody having risen to congratulate and eulogize him, is still recognizably of royal quality, if we evoke it from the Walpole Notes. Very modest, very noble, true; and with fine pieties and magnanimities delicately audible in it: "Not a week all Summer but has been a crisis, in which I have not known whether I should not be torn to pieces, instead of being commended, as now by the Honorable Member. The hand of Divine Providence; the more a man is versed in business, the more he everywhere traces that!... Success has given us unanimity, not unanimity success. For my own poor share, I could not have dared as I have done, except in these times. Other Ministers have hoped as well, but have not been so circumstanced to dare so much.... I think the stone almost rolled to the top of the hill; but let us have a care; it may rebound, and hideously drag us down with it again." [Ib. iii. 225; Thackeray, i. 446.]