"Constant reference is made to the walls and gates of Montreal as well as Quebec, and there is reason to believe the smaller towns were similarly fortified. Beyond the walls, however, there was a considerable population, and many of the military officers, Government officials and merchants had villas without the city. The area in Montreal which lies between Craig, St. Antoine and Sherbrooke streets was studded with country-houses with large gardens and orchards attached. The seigneurs and other gentry had also fine, capacious stone-built residences, which much enhanced the charm of the rural scenery. Some of the estates of those days were of almost immense extent. The Kings of France thought nothing of granting a whole province, and, even in British times, there were gentlemen whose acres would have superimposed an English county. The extraordinary donation of James I. of a large portion of North America to Sir William Alexander was not long since brought before the public by the claims of his descendants. Large tracts of land were given away by Louis XIII., Louis XIV. and other French kings, by Oliver Cromwell and the Stuarts, and the same extravagant system of entailing unmanageable wealth on companies and individuals was continued after the conquest. "It would be interesting to know what was the kind of literary fare on which the intellect of Canada subsisted in those days. It cannot be supposed that the people spent all their time in business and social pleasure. There must have been readers as well as cariolers and dancers, and the literature of England and France was by no means scanty. Great writers on every subject have flourished since that time, but some of the greatest that ever lived, some of those whose productions are still read with the highest pleasure, were the offspring of the two centuries which preceded the conquest. No one will be surprised to find, then, that in the year 1783, a circulating library in Quebec numbered nearly 2,000 volumes. Nor is the enquirer left in the dark as to its probable contents. In the Quebec _Gazette_ of the 4th of December, a list of books is given which 'remained unsold at M. Jacques Perrault's, very elegantly bound'--and books were bound substantially as well as elegantly in those days. In this list are found 'Johnson's Dictionary,' then regarded as one of the wonders of the literary world, 'Chesterfield's Letters,' long the _vade-mecum_ of every young gentleman beginning life, and which, even in our own days (and perhaps still), were frequently bound along with spelling and reading books, the 'Pilgrim's Progress', which it is not necessary to characterize, Young's 'Night Thoughts,' the 'Spectator and 'Guardian,' Rapin's 'English History,' 'Cook's Voyages,' Rousseau's 'Eloise,' 'Télémaque,' 'Histoire Chinoise,'