A path had been discovered up the cliffside--the path disclosed seventy years before to Phipps--at the top there was a small guard and nothing more. On the night of the great venture the boats slipped quietly down the river, and as the French were expecting a convoy of provisions two sentries let them go by after a first challenge. Wolfe, sitting in the stem of one of the boats, was murmuring in a solemn whisper the beautiful lines of Grey's Elegy:-- "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike th' inevitable hour; The paths of glory lead but to the grave."[302] "Gentlemen," said he, "I would sooner have written that poem than take Quebec." [Illustration: THE DEATH OF WOLFE. _After the painting by B. West._] The landing was successfully accomplished, the guard at the top was overpowered, and before Montcalm knew that the English had left their camp, four thousand five hundred men were standing in that "thin red line" upon the Heights of Abraham. The gallant Montcalm did what he could, and with surprising energy collected his troops and led them against the English. The French fired time and again upon Wolfe's men, but they stolidly awaited their advance until they could see the whites of their eyes and then let loose upon them a withering fire. The white coats of the French regulars and the gay costumes of the French Canadian trappers were ready targets and they reeled and fell. Wolfe then ordered the assault, and with a second volley the whole army charged, Wolfe leading his grenadiers. After receiving a slight wound, a fatal bullet singled out that gallant man, and he fell, unnoticed for the moment save by four of his officers, who tenderly carried him to the rear of the advancing host. "They run! They run!" cried one of the officers. "Who run?" said Wolfe. "The French," they replied. "God be praised, I die in peace." Montcalm was also mortally wounded, and just before the city actually capitulated he passed away, happy that he should not witness the surrender. Montcalm, like Wolfe, was a hero and a patriot, but whereas Wolfe gained the love and everlasting memory of a grateful country and Empire, Montcalm's name was dragged down by unworthy men who never understood his burning zeal, who had none of his ambition for a glorious French Empire in the West. Wolfe's "star had only just arisen. For a moment something like a cloud seemed to have obscured its very dawn; when suddenly bursting like a meteor across the whole horizon of war and politics, it vanished amid a blaze of glory as splendid in a sense and as lasting as that of Nelson himself. It seemed, in truth, as if a great leader had been found and lost in a single moon."[303]