"Curious old Quebec!--of all the cities on the continent of America, the quaintest.... It is a populated cliff. It is a mighty rock, scarped and graded, and made to hold houses and castles which, by a proper natural law, ought to slide off from its back, like an ungirded load from a camel's back. But they stick. At the foot of the rocks, the space of several streets in width has been stolen from the river.... We landed.... "Away we went, climbing the steep streets at a canter with little horses hardly bigger than flies, with an aptitude for climbing perpendicular walls. It was strange to enter a walled city through low and gloomy gates, on this continent of America. Here was a small bit of mediaeval Europe perched upon a rock, and dried for keeping, in this north-east corner of America, a curiosity that has not its equal, in its kind, on this side of the ocean.... "We rode about as if we were in a picture-book, taming over a new leaf at each street!... The place should always be kept old. Let people go somewhere else for modern improvements. It is a shame, when Quebec placed herself far out of the way, up in the very neighbourhood of Hudson's Bay, that it should be hunted and harassed with new-fangled notions, and that all the charming inconveniences and irregularities of narrow and tortuous streets, that so delight a traveller's eyes, should be altered to suit the fantastic notions of modern people.... "Our stay in Quebec was too short by far. But it was long enough to make it certain that we shall come back again. A summer in Canada would form one of the most delightful holidays that we can imagine. We mean to prove our sincerity by our conduct. And then, if it is not all that our imagination promises, we will write again and confess." Professor Benjamin Silliman discourses thus:-- "A seat of ancient dominion--now hoary with the lapse of more than two centuries--formerly the seat of a French empire in the west--lost and won by the blood of gallant armies, and of illustrious commanders-- throned on a rock, and defended by all the proud defiance of war! Who could approach such a city without emotion? Who in Canada has not longed to cast his eyes on the water-girt rocks and towers of Quebec."--(Silliman's _Tour in Canada_, 1819.) Charles Lever has left a curious glimpse of Quebec from Diamond Harbour, as seen, by his incomparable Irish Gil Blas, Mr. Cornelius Cregan, the appreciated lodger of Madam Thomas John Davis at the "Hotel Davis."