There are six churches in Montreal; one for English Episcopalians, one for Presbyterians, and four for Roman Catholics. The cathedral church belonging to the latter, which occupies one side of La Place d’Armes, is a very spacious building, and contains five altars, all very richly decorated. The doors of this cathedral are left open the greater part of the day, and there are, generally, numbers of old people in it at their prayers, even when no regular service is going on. On a fine Sunday in the summer season such multitudes flock to it, that even the steps at the outside are covered with people, who, unable to get in, remain there kneeling with their hats off during the whole time of divine service. Nearly all the christenings, marriages, and burials of the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Montreal are performed in this church, on which occasions, as well as before and during the masses, they always ring the bells, to the great annoyance of every person that is not a lover of discords; for instead of pulling the bells, which are five in number, and really well toned, with regularity, they jingle them all at once, without any sort of cadence whatever. Our lodgings happened to be in La Place d’Armes; and during three weeks that we remained there, I verily believe the bells were never suffered to remain still for two hours together, at any one time, except in the night. [Sidenote: MONTREAL.] The funerals, as in other Roman Catholic countries, are conducted with great ceremony; the corpse is always attended to the church by a number of priests chanting prayers, and by little boys in white robes and black caps carrying wax lights. A morning scarcely ever passed over that one or more of these processions did not pass under our windows whilst we were at breakfast; for on the opposite side of the square to that on which the cathedral stood, was a sort of chapel, to which the bodies of all those persons, whose friends could not afford to pay for an expensive funeral, were brought, I suppose, in the night, for we could never see any carried in there, and from thence conveyed in the morning to the cathedral. If the priests are paid for it they go to the house of the deceased, though it be ever so far distant, and escort the corpse to the church. Until within a few years past it was customary to bury all the bodies in the vaults underneath the cathedral; but now it is prohibited, lest some putrid disorder should break out in the town in consequence of such numbers being deposited there. The burying grounds are all without the walls at present.