In Canada there is the stage, and there are the materials for a great nation. Its towns are more solidly built than those of the same size in the States, possibly on account of the greater severity of the climate. The country is generally fertile. It is also very varied, full of lakes, and streams, and forests. It abounds in mineral wealth and in agricultural produce. Notwithstanding its seven months’ winter, it is capable of ripening maize and maturing tobacco; and even, to speak of small things, through the medium of its peas, a crop which can rarely be grown profitably to the south of the lakes, it supplies no inconsiderable part of what is used for coffee among its neighbours. That product, however, of Canada, which most attracts the attention of the traveller, and is likely to make the strongest impression upon him, is the complexion of the Canadian ladies. It gives you more of the idea of transparency, otherwise you might have thought that it was of pearl. On a Sunday, while at Montreal, in my way to the Episcopal cathedral of Christ’s Church, I allowed time for witnessing the celebration of High Mass at the church or cathedral annexed to the Jesuits’ College. As I left the building the thought in my mind was, ‘I should like to ask the priests who have just been officiating, if they have, or can imagine, any reasons for believing that this service is either acceptable to God or edifying to man?’ In the English cathedral the service was very well and impressively read by an elderly clergyman; but the young clergyman who afterwards occupied the pulpit was far too minutely acquainted with all that passes in the mind of the Almighty. No man could be so fully acquainted with what passes in the mind of his most familiar friend—hardly with what passes in his own mind. [Sidenote: _Canadian Railways._]