And yet Notre Dame is one of the most satisfying churches that we have ever seen. It is not alone its size, not alone its wonderfully appropriate location facing that historic Place d'Armes, not any one of the interesting details of the great structure that comes to us, so much as the thing which the parish church typifies--the intact keeping of the customs, the language and the faith of a folk who were betrayed and deserted by their motherland, more than a century and a half ago. One rarely hears the word of English spoken in the shadowy and worshipful aisles of Notre Dame. It is the babbling French that is the language of three-quarters of the residents of Montreal. For there stands French, not only entrenched in the chief city of England's chief possession, but a language that, in the opinion of unprejudiced observers, gains rather than loses following each twelvemonth. There are reasons back of all this, and many of them too complicated and involved to be entered upon here. Suffice it to say here and now that the city school taxes are divided pro rata between Protestants and Roman Catholics for the conduct of their several schools of every sort. And that in most of the Catholic schools French is practically the only language taught, a half-hour a day being sometimes given to English, whenever it is taught at all. The devotion of these French Canadians to their language is only second to their religion, and is closely intermingled with it. There is something pathetic and lovable about it all that makes one understand why the _habitans_ of a little town below Montreal tore down the English sign that the Dominion government erected over their Post Office, a year or so ago. And the Dominion government took the hint, made no fuss, but replaced its error with a French sign. Remember that there are more Tricolors floating in lower Canada than British Union Jacks. The signs of Montreal point the truth. Half of the street markers must be in English, half in French, just as the city government that places them divides its proceedings, half in one language, half in the other. This even division runs to the street car transfers and notices, the flaring bulletins on sign-boards and dead-walls, even so stolid a British institution as the Harbor Commissioners giving the sides of its brigade of dock locomotives evenly to the rival tongues.