The First Time Our Eye Scanned The Silent And Deserted Banquetting Halls
Of Belmont, With Their Lofty Ceilings, And Recalling The Traditional
Accounts Of The Hospitable Gentlemen, Whose Joviality Had Once Lit Up The
Scene, Visions Of Social Ireland Of Barrington's Day Floated Uppermost In
Our Mind.
We could fancy we saw the gay roysterers of times by-gone - first
a fete champetre of lively French
Officers from Quebec, making merry over
their Bordeaux or Burgundy, and celebrating the news of their recent
victories at Fontenoy, [259] Lauffeld or Carillon, to the jocund sound of
Vive la France! Vive le Marechal de Saxe! a la Claire Fontaine, &c
then Governor Murray, surrounded by his veterans, Guy Carleton, Col.
Caldwell, Majors Hale, Holland, and some of the new subjects, such as the
brave Chs. De Lanaudiere, [260] complimenting one another all around over
the feats of the respective armies at the two memorable battles of the
Plains, and all joining loyally in repeating the favorite toast in Wolfe's
fleet, British colours on every French fort, port and garrison in
America! Later on, at the beginning of the present century, a gathering
of those Canadian Barons, so graphically delineated by John Lambert in his
Travels in Canada, in 1808 - one week surrounding the festive board of
this jolly Receiver General of Canada at Belmont, the next at
Charlesbourg, making the romantic echoes of the Hermitage ring again with
old English cheers and loyal toasts to "George the King," or else
installing a "Baron" at the Union Hotel, Place d'Armes, - possibly in
the very Council-room in which the State secrets of Canada were in 1865
daily canvassed - and flinging down to the landlord as Lambert says, "250
guineas for the entertainement." Where are now the choice spirits of that
comparatively modern day, the rank and fashion who used to go and sip
claret or eat ice-cream with Sir James Craig, at Powell Place?
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