Charles;[773]
and lastly, when Bougainville saw Holmes's vessels drift down the
stream, he did not tax his weary troops to follow them, thinking that
they would return as usual with the flood tide.[774] But for these
conspiring circumstances New France might have lived a little longer,
and the fruitless heroism of Wolfe would have passed, with countless
other heroisms, into oblivion.
[Footnote 771: _Journal tenu a l'Armee_, etc.]
[Footnote 772: _Memoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760.]
[Footnote 773: Foligny, _Journal memoratif. Journal a l'Armee_, etc.]
[Footnote 774: Johnstone, _Dialogue. Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5
Oct._1759.]
For full two hours the procession of boats, borne on the current,
steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars were visible, but the
night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The General was in one of the
foremost boats, and near him was a young midshipman, John Robison,
afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University of
Edinburgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a low
voice, repeated Gray's _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_ to the officers
about him. Probably it was to relieve the intense strain of his
thoughts. Among the rest was the verse which his own fate was soon to
illustrate,--
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
P/
"Gentlemen," he said, as his recital ended, "I would rather have written
those lines than take Quebec.
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