The Esplanade is still used as a parade ground, if not by our city militia by our provincial troops. Right well can we recall the manly form of the Commander of the "B" Battery, Lieut.-Colonel T. B. Strange, bestriding a noble charger, putting his splendid, though not numerous corps, through their drill on the Esplanade. We have also sometimes caught sight there of our gay Volunteers. Occasionally these grounds are used by the divers lacrosse clubs for their athletic games--the _doyen_ of our city _littérateurs_, the Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau, in a graphic portraiture of the "Quebec of the Past," has most feelingly retraced the vanished glories, the military pageants, the practical jokers, the City Watch, the social gatherings, which his youthful eyes witnessed of yore on the Esplanade and on Durham Terrace. We have attempted to render in English a striking chapter of this sparkling effusion:-- _OLDEN TIMES IN THE ANCIENT CAPITAL._ "There is not only the quaint city of Champlain--of Montmagny--of Frontenac--of Bishop Laval--of Governor de Vaudreuil and Montcalm--of Lord Dorchester and Colonel Dambourges--that is rapidly fading away; there is not merely the grim fortress of the French _régime_, the city of early English rule, disappearing piecemeal in the dissolving shadows of the past. A much more modern town--newer even than that so graphically pictured by our old friend Monsieur de Gaspé--the Quebec of our boyhood--of our youth--the Quebec embalmed in the haunted chambers of memory prior to 1837--it also each day seems retreating-- crumbling--evanescing. Where are those dashing regiments which every Sunday at 4 p.m. (we were not such Puritans then as now) paraded in the open space facing the Esplanade walls, under the approving eye of the beauty and fashion of all Quebec, assembled from outside and from inside of the walls-- the men proud of their bottle-green or dark-blue coats and white duck pants--all the vogue then--while the softer sex and juveniles were apparelled in the gayest of toilettes--brightest of colors--loudest of contrasts: white--pink--green! How densely packed, our Esplanade! Little boys and girls crowding in every corner of the lovely precipitous lawn which, amphitheatre-like, stretches down--a hanging garden of verdure and beauty. The splendid regimental bands of music, the gaudily uniformed staff officers curvetting on their chargers, with nodding plumes and heavy, glittering epaulettes (alas! the navy now seems to have monopolised the gold lace for their shoulder- straps), and those irresistible sappers with their bushy beards heading the pageant, and those incomparable drum-majors, who could fling high in the air their _batons_, and catch them so gracefully in their descent. How their glittering coats did enrapture the crowd! All these wondrous sights of our youth, where will we now find them?