The damp, vaulted cells in the basement, where the condemned felon in silence awaited his doom, or the airy wards above, where the impecunious debtor or the runaway sailor meditatively or riotously defied their traditional enemies the constable and policeman, now echo the Hebrew, Greek and Latin utterances of the Morrin College professors, and on meeting nights the disquisitions before the Literary and Historical Society, of lecturers on Canadian history, literature or art. It is the glory and privilege of the latter institution in accordance with the object of its Royal Charter, to offer to citizens of all creeds and nationalities, a neutral ground, sacred to intellectual pursuits. It dates back to 1823, when His Excellency, George Ramsay, Earl of Dalhousie, assisted by the late Dr. John Charlton Fisher, LL.D., and ex-editor of the New York _Albion_, successfully matured a long meditated plan to promote the study of history and of literature. The Literary and Historical Society held its first meeting in the _Château St. Louis_. It is curious to glance over the list of names in its charter. [52] It contained the leading men on the Bench, in the professions, and in the city. In 1832 the library and museum occupied a large room in the Union building facing the Ring. From thence they were transferred to the upper story of the Parliament Buildings, on Mountain Hill, where a portion of both was destroyed by the conflagration which burnt down the stately cut-stone edifice in 1854, with the stone of which in 1860, the Champlain Market Hall was built. What was saved of the library and museum was transferred to apartments in St Louis street, then owned by the late George Henderson, J.P. [53] The next removal, about 1860, brought the institution to Masonic Hall, corner of Garden and St. Louis streets. Here, also, the fire-fiend assailed the treasures of knowledge and specimens of natural history, of the society, which, with its household gods, flitted down to a suite of rooms above the savings bank apartments in St. John Street, from whence, about 1870, it issued to become an annual tenant in the north wing of the Morrin College, where it has flourished ever since.