Picturesque Quebec, By James Macpherson Le Moine










































































































































 -  Large tracts of land were given away by Louis
    XIII., Louis XIV. and other French kings, by Oliver Cromwell and - Page 34
Picturesque Quebec, By James Macpherson Le Moine - Page 34 of 451 - First - Home

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Large Tracts Of Land Were Given Away By Louis XIII., Louis XIV.

And other French kings, by Oliver Cromwell and the Stuarts, and the same extravagant system of entailing unmanageable wealth on companies and individuals was continued after the conquest.

"It would be interesting to know what was the kind of literary fare on which the intellect of Canada subsisted in those days. It cannot be supposed that the people spent all their time in business and social pleasure. There must have been readers as well as cariolers and dancers, and the literature of England and France was by no means scanty. Great writers on every subject have flourished since that time, but some of the greatest that ever lived, some of those whose productions are still read with the highest pleasure, were the offspring of the two centuries which preceded the conquest. No one will be surprised to find, then, that in the year 1783, a circulating library in Quebec numbered nearly 2,000 volumes. Nor is the enquirer left in the dark as to its probable contents. In the Quebec Gazette of the 4th of December, a list of books is given which 'remained unsold at M. Jacques Perrault's, very elegantly bound' - and books were bound substantially as well as elegantly in those days. In this list are found 'Johnson's Dictionary,' then regarded as one of the wonders of the literary world, 'Chesterfield's Letters,' long the vade-mecum of every young gentleman beginning life, and which, even in our own days (and perhaps still), were frequently bound along with spelling and reading books, the 'Pilgrim's Progress', which it is not necessary to characterize, Young's 'Night Thoughts,' the 'Spectator and 'Guardian,' Rapin's 'English History,' 'Cook's Voyages,' Rousseau's 'Eloise,' 'Telemaque,' 'Histoire Chinoise,' 'Esprit des Croissades,' 'Lettres de Fernand Cortes,' 'Histoire Ancienne' par Rollin, 'Grammaire Anglaise et Francaise,' 'Dictionnaire par l'Academie,' 'Dictionnaire de Commerce,' 'Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences,' 'Smith's Housewife,' 'The Devil on Sticks,' 'Voltaire's Essay on Universal History,' 'Dictionnaire de Cuisine' and several others on various subjects, 'Oeuvres de Rabelais,' 'American Gazetteer,' etc. These, it will be remembered, had remained unsold, but among the sold there must have been copies of the same.

"It is, according to our notions of to-day, a meagre collection, but, no doubt, many families possessed good libraries, brought with them from over the sea, and the bookseller may not have kept a large stock at one time. It was the custom for merchants to sell off all their overlying goods before they went or sent to Europe for a reinforcement.

"The following books were advertised as 'missing:' - Langhorn's Plutarch, 1st vol., Thomson's Works, 4th vol., Gordon's 'Universal Accountant,' 1st vol.; and Gray's Hudibras, 2nd vol. For each one of them there is offered a reward of two dollars! Reading was expensive recreation in those times.

"The reader, perhaps, has seen, or, it may be, possesses one of those old libraries, of which the general public occasionally have a glimpse at auction rooms, composed of standard authors, and beautifully and solidly bound, which had adorned the studies of the fathers of our country.

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