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He looked at the ranks of Wolfe's army drawn up before him on the Plains of Abraham, and he did not hesitate to attack. He would not wait for Bougainville, nor would he hold back for the garrison of Quebec. He saw that the gauge of battle had been flung down to him and he knew that he must march at once upon the British and the Americans.
The fact was that Wolfe, meeting one of his compatriots and conversing with him somewhat loudly, had uttered some words which attracted the spleen of the soldier, who was reeling home very comfortably intoxicated; and the soldier had most assuredly indulged in a copious abuse of the d d rebel who could not walk the streets without chattering sedition. Wolfe's friend confirmed the statement.
Ever since July 18 Admiral Saunders had been sending more and more ships up the river, under cover of the fire from the Levis batteries. In August things had grown worse for Montcalm. Admiral Holmes commanded a strong squadron in the river above Quebec. Under his convoy one of Wolfe's brigades landed at Deschambault, forty miles above Quebec, and burnt a magazine of food and other stores.
He then said that he was strongly impressed with the feeling that he should fall on the morrow, and therefore wished to entrust to his friend the miniature of the lady, Miss Lowther, to whom he was engaged, and to have from him the promise that, if the foreboding proved true, he would in person deliver to her both the portrait and Wolfe's own last messages.
His father saw the unspeakable things depicted with ghastly accuracy by Smollett, and warned his son never, if he could help it, to go on joint expeditions of the two services a precept which the soldier of an island power would have found it difficult to observe. Wolfe's mother had struggled to prevent her boy from going, and appealed to his love of her.
Wolfe's army had broken camp and got safely away, right under the noses of the French, without the loss of a single man. A whole week, from September 3 to 10, was then taken up with trying to see how the brigadiers' plan could be carried out. This plan was good, as far as it went. An army is even harder to supply than a town would be if the town was taken up bodily and moved about the country.
A living light shot then for a moment over Wolfe's eye and brow. "I have!" said he; and raising his clasped hands to Heaven, he continued in the memorable words of Sidney, "Lord, defend Thy own cause, and defend those who defend it!
It is impossible to tell how far, in Wolfe's mind, his own desperate fortunes might insensibly have mingled with the motives which led him to his present design: certain it is that wherever the future is hopeless the mind is easily converted from the rugged to the criminal; and equally certain it is that we are apt to justify to ourselves many offences in a cause where we have made great sacrifices; and, perhaps, if this unexpected assistance had come to Wolfe a short time before, it might, by softening his heart and reconciling him in some measure to fortune, have rendered him less susceptible to the fierce voice of political hatred and the instigation of his associates.
Wolfe's artist-eye grew drunk with color. The gates of that other world! Fading, flashing before him now! What, in that world of Beauty, Content, and Right, were the petty laws, the mine and thine, of mill-owners and mill-hands? A consciousness of power stirred within him. He stood up. A man, he thought, stretching out his hands, free to work, to live, to love! Free! His right!
Of the poetical extracts all the users of this book will remember Southey's "Cataract of Lodore" with its exacting drill on the ending, "ing," Longfellow's "Village Blacksmith" and the "Reaper and the Flowers;" Bryant's "Thanatopsis" and "Song of the Stars;" Wolfe's "Burial of Sir John Moore;" Gray's "Elegy;" Mrs.
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