with their servant; Montmagny, no very willing spectator; and Maisonneuve, a warlike figure, erect and tall, his men clustering around him. They kneeled in reverent silence as the Host was raised aloft; and when the rite was over, the priest turned and addressed them— 'You are a grain of mustard seed, that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth. You are few, but the work is the work of God. His smile is on you, and your children shall fill the land.""

No fair-minded Protestant will withold the tribute of admiration from the Jesuit Fathers who, with cross in hand, traversed the forests of Canada, bearing the cross in a still higher sense, undergoing as many perils and hardships as those which the Apostle Paul himself enumerates, all that they might bring the savage aborigines to embrace the faith of their Church. Granted that they were chargeable with the faults usually ascribed to their order, and that they were intolerant of any rivals in the New World, even from among the other clergy of the Church of Rome, still their zeal and courage and enterprise, the self-denial they practised, and the trials they endured, in the prosecution of their sacred calling, are worthy of all praise. To their enthusiasm it was due that the French colony was planted on this spot; and their characteristic devotion to the Virgin was displayed in the name selected for the new town—Ville-Marie.

Judging from the number and grandeur of the churches which adorn the city, one may conclude that the sentiment in which Montreal was founded still maintains its hold upon the community. It is pre-eminently a city of churches. Strangers are always struck with this marked feature in its architectural aspect; and the American humorist, Mark Twain," was perhaps justified in drawing attention to the large group of ecclesiastical buildings that surrounds the Windsor Hotel, when he said, in a

speech at a public dinner, that he never was in a city before where one could not throw a brickbat without breaking a church window. "Our Laureate," Louis Frechette, gracefully speaks of the steeples of the city as "un bandeau de coupoles"—a chaplet of cupolas encircling the city's brow.

Not that all the pioneers of Christian civilization in Canada of French origin, whom Frechette so justly celebrates as "grands aieux," great ancestors—whose footsteps their posterity should delight to trace—were Jesuits or inspired by Jesuit teachers. As we shall see; the Recollets and Sulpician Fathers were also early in the field, and contributed their fair share to the cherished memories of those brave days of old. Besides, a few of the enterprising and high-spirited Huguenots—De Monts, the De Caens, the De La Tours, the Kirkes, Chauvin, Bernon and other French Protestants—" helped to raise our cities on the sides of rocks, or, as if with magic wand, to cause them to spring forth from the depths of the forest, and, otherwise, to sow the seeds of progress." But the sentiment that impelled most of the distinguished sons of France who at this early period aided in the colonization of Canada, was no doubt correctly voiced by Champlain, the bravest, most energetic and constant of them all in his faith in the future of our country, and a devout Roman Catholic, when he declared "that the salvation of one soul was of more value than the conquest of an empire."

The religious character of Montreal may be said to have been completed and rendered permanent, so far as human arrangement can make anything permanent, by the cession of the whole island to the Sulpicians of Paris in 1644. The "Company of One Hundred Associates," an organization formed under the advice and patronage of Cardinal Richelieu, prime minister of Louis XIII., had not

made good what was expected of it in the way of promoting the interests of the colony. Although the Cardinal's "Company" embraced several clergymen, and undertook to establish three priests in every settlement, and to set apart glebes for maintaining the "Catholic Church in New France," the traders in the Association failed to second the designs of the priests, to make the promotion of religion its first object; and the efforts of the clergy were still further thwarted by the breaking out of war between France and England, and the taking of Quebec by Sir David Kirke in 1629. It was after the restoration of Canada to France, which took place in 1632, that the new company, numbering fifty persons, to promote the views of which Maisonneuve crossed the sea, was organized. This association was imbued with more decided religious feelings than the "Company which preceded it had been. Its members all belonged to the higher class of French families, and were animated with a lofty zeal for the salvation of the native tribes, as well as for the extension of the Roman Catholic Church.

But more than high motives and consuming zeal was required for permanent success in such an undertaking. Men and means were needed; and, above all, matured plans, patiently wrought out, and backed up by a society in which there was a continuance of zeal and order. These requirements were met in the Fathers of St. Sulpice, who have continued to this day to be the lords of the soil, and have displayed much worldly wisdom, as well as hospitality of mind, towards all and sundry that have settled on the island, so long as their seigniorial rights were acknowledged and their dues were received.

In the year 1657, the Abbe Quelus, with other deputies from the parent Seminary at Paris, arrived in Montreal with a view to taking over the island, the ownership of which the order had acquired, and founding a branch

seminary in the colony. The Sulpicians acted on the sound principle, which the Protestant churches have been slow to recognize, that missionary work in any country can be carried on most successfully by agents trained on the spot.

The domain which was placed at their disposal for educational purposes amounted to 250,191 acres. The Sulpicians were then a comparatively new society in the Roman Catholic Church. The order was founded by Jean Jacques Olier, who was born at Paris in 1608, and died the year the branch seminary was planted in Montreal. He went through a course of study at the College of the Sorbonne, attending the lectures of St Vincent de Paul there, intercourse with whom gave the direction to his life which it afterwards took. He resolved to throw himself into the work of training an order of priests whom he hoped to inspire, at once with a love of study, and with a consuming desire for the salvation of the souls committed to their care. His earliest essay in this direction was made in 1641, at Vaugerard, a Faubourg of Paris, where he was first settled as a curé. In 1642, he was appointed to the Church of St. Sulpice in Paris, and in 1645 he founded a seminary on a larger scale than that which he had previously set up at Vaugerard, and called it after the parish of which he was curi. Sulpitius, the Saint to whom both the parish and the seminary were dedicated, and whose fête is held on the 17th of January, was an eminent bishop of Bourges, in the seventh century, chaplain to Clotaire II., and was praised for his distinguished piety and zeal by Bossuet and Fenelon. Branches of the seminary were established at Nantes, Vivieres, au Puyen, Velay, and Clermont en Auvergne, as well as at Montreal, for the education of ecclesiastics. Under the wise and easy superintendence of Abbé Olier, the seminary grew rapidly in influence and usefulness. His administration

of his own parish was a model for the young priests receiving training under his care. He laboured hard to reform the morals of the people, provided institutions for the relief of the sick and needy, and asylums for orphans, as well as schools for the children of the parish. And it may be said that the good Abbé's hopes have been in a large measure realized, in the history of the Seminary which he founded. For two hundred and forty-five years, it has industriously striven to train a high-toned clergy for France and Canada. It has always been a fair exponent of the spirit prevailing in the Church in those two countries. Reflecting the views of the Archbishop of Paris, for the time being, and of the higher clergy, the parent seminary has been, by turns, Ultramontane, Molinist, and Gallican. It was suppressed in 1792, at the same time as all the other religious communities in France. In 1802, the original structure was thrown down by the revolutionists; while the Church of St. Sulpice near by was turned into a Temple of Victory, in which the orgies of the new religion were carried on, and Bonaparte, on one occasion, held a banquet. For eighteen years, the Seminary occupied temporary quarters, and in 1820, commodious buildings, in which the institution still prosecutes its work in Paris, were erected. It is of importance to all the citizens of Montreal to have some knowledge of the great corporation that exercises feudal lordship over them. At the head of the Seminary in this city always have been placed gentlemen of farseeing intelligence and high business capacity, who have contributed to make it the mighty power it is in the Dominion. I speak of them, of course, only in their civil relations. In those relations their policy has been uniformly liberal and enlightened. They have made no difference between Frenchmen and Englishmen, Catholic and Protestant. Their business has been to build up a large and prosperous city at the foot of Mount Royal, and they have