When the brilliant Henry Ward Beecher pronounced Quebec an _Old Curiosity Shop_, we are induced to think that amidst its accumulated antiquarian relics, its church pictures and madonnas, its famous battle-fields, its historical monuments, massive fortifications and wondrous scenery,--more than one of the quaint French dwellings with their peaked gables, and walls four feet thick, must have caught his observant eye. However striking Ward Beecher's word-painting may be, it would I opine, have required the marvellous pencil of the author of "_The House with the Seven Gables_," Nathaniel Hawthorne, becomingly to portray all the _arcana_ of such a building as the _Chien d'Or_ (the old Post Office), with its ghastly memories of blood and revenge. The legendary moss clustering round these hoary piles, is not, however, always dark and gloomy. Love, war, adventure, occasionally lend them their exciting or their soft glamour. Sometimes the annals of commerce entwine them with a green wreath--a sure talisman against the rust of oblivion. It is one of the land marks of commerce we purpose here briefly to describe. At the foot of Mountain Hill, lies our chief emporium of news, labelled for more than a quarter of a century, _Morning Chronicle_ Office. These premises stand on a very conspicuous site, viz., at the foot of Mountain Hill, the highway from the port to the Upper Town, direct to the old _Château_ and Citadel--a few rods only from the spot where Champlain, in 1608, laid the foundations of his extensive warehouses and dwelling, and close to where, in 1615, he had his famous gardens. This business stand, for many years past, was owned by the late Hon. Henry Black; at present it belongs to Hon. Geo. Okill Stuart, Judge of the Court of Vice Admiralty. Its beginnings brings us back to the era of the Bourbon sovereigns of Canada, to the unregretted time (1758), when Intendant Bigot's shoddy _entourage_ held high carnival in famine-stricken Quebec. In those blighting days, in which Madame de Pompadour reigned in France, and Madame Pean in Quebec, _rings_ and public robbery flourished in Canada; but among high officials, all were not corrupt. There were some memorable exceptions. One of these exceptions was the worthy, witty, and honest warden of the Quebec merchants, Jean Taché, "_homme probe et d'esprit_," say old memoirs. Mr. Taché, the "_syndic des marchands_," was not only an upright and wealthy merchant, he was also gifted with the poetical fire; he, it was, who wrote the first French poem issued in Canada, "_Le Tableau de la Mer_."