Palace Street was thus denominated from its leading direct from the Upper Town to the Intendant's Palace--latterly the King's woodyard. In earlier days it went by the name of _Rue des Pauvres_, [49] (Street of the Poor,) from its intersecting the domain of the _Hôtel Dieu_, whose revenues were devoted to the maintenance of the poor sheltered behind its massive old walls. Close by, on Fabrique street, Bishop de St. Vallier had founded _le Bureau des Pauvres_, where the beggars of Quebec (a thriving class to this day) received alms, in order to deter them from begging in the country round the city. The success which crowned this humble retreat of the mendicant led the philanthropic Bishop to found the General Hospital in the Seigneurie de Notre Dame des Anges, beyond St. Roch. He received there nuns of the Convents of the Ursulines and of the Hôtel Dieu and gave them the administration of the newly founded establishment, where, moreover, he at a more recent date resided as almoner of the poor. At the western corner of Palace and St. John streets, has stood since 1771, a well known landmark erected to replace the statue of Saint John the Baptist, which had, under the French _régime_, adorned the corner house. After the surrender of Quebec to the British forces, the owners of the house, fearing the outer barbarians might be wanting in respect to the saint's effigy, sent it to the General Hospital, where it stood over the principal entrance until a few years back. They replaced it by a wooden statue of General Wolfe, sculptured by the Brothers Cholette, at the request of George Hipps, a loyal butcher. The peregrinations of this historic relic, in 1838, from Quebec to Halifax--from Halifax to Bermuda, thence to Portsmouth, and finally to its old niche at Wolfe's corner, St. John Street, whilst they afforded much sport to the middies of H. M. Ship _Inconstant_, who visited our port that summer and carried away the General, were the subject of several newspaper paragraphs in prose and verse. Finally, the safe return of the "General" with a brand new coat of paint and varnish in a deal box, consigned to His Worship, the Mayor of Quebec sent by unknown hands, was made an occasion of rejoicing to every friend of the British hero whom Quebec contained, and they were not few. Some of the actors of this practical joke, staunch upholders of Britannia's sovereignty of the sea, now pace the quarter deck, t'is said, proud and stern admirals.