"Of all the historic monuments connecting modern Quebec with its eventful and heroic past, none have deservedly held a higher place in the estimation of the antiquarian, the scholar and the curious stranger than the former gates of the renowned fortress. These relics of a by-gone age, with their massive proportions and grim, medieval architecture, no longer exist, however, to carry the mind back to the days which invest the oldest city in North America with its peculiar interest and attraction. Nothing now remains to show where they once raised their formidable barriers to the foe or opened their hospitable portals to friends, but graceful substitutes of modern construction or yawning apertures in the line of circumvallation, where until 1871 stood Prescott and Hope Gates which represented the later defences of the place erected under British rule. Of the three gates--St. Louis, St. John and Palace--which originally pierced the fortifications of Quebec under French dominion, the last vestige disappeared many years ago. The structures with which they were replaced, together with the two additional and similarly guarded openings--Hope and Prescott gates--provided for the public convenience or military requirements by the British Government since the Conquest, have experienced the same fate within the last decade to gratify what are known as modern ideas of progress and improvement--vandalism would, perhaps, be the better term. No desecrating hand, however, can rob those hallowed links, in the chain of recollection, of the glorious memories which cluster around them so thickly. Time and obliteration itself have wrought no diminution of regard for their cherished associations.