No More Learning

It chanced, too, that a Lower Town
got before it, and clung like an oyster to the outside of the crags,
as you may see at low tide. It is as if you were to come to a country
village surrounded by palisades in the old Indian fashion,--interesting
only as a relic of antiquity and barbarism. A fortified town is like a
man cased in the heavy armor of antiquity, with a horse-load of
broadswords and small arms slung to him, endeavoring to go about his
business. Or is this an indispensable machinery for the good
government of the country? The inhabitants of California succeed
pretty well, and are doing better and better every day, without any
such institution. What use has this fortress served, to look at it
even from the soldiers' point of view? At first the French took care
of it; yet Wolfe sailed by it with impunity, and took the town of
Quebec without experiencing any hindrance at last from its
fortifications. They were only the bone for which the parties fought.
Then the English began to take care of it. So of any fort in the
world,--that in Boston Harbor, for instance. We shall at length hear
that an enemy sailed by it in the night, for it cannot sail itself,
and both it and its inhabitants are always benighted. How often we
read that the enemy occupied a position which commanded the old, and
so the fort was evacuated! Have not the schoolhouse and the
printing-press occupied a position which commands such a fort as this?

However, this is a ruin kept in remarkably good repair. There are some
eight hundred or thousand men there to exhibit it.
One regiment goes
bare-legged to increase the attraction. If you wish to study the
muscles of the leg about the knee, repair to Quebec. This universal
exhibition in Canada of the tools and sinews of war reminded me of the
keeper of a menagerie showing his animals' claws. It was the English
leopard showing his claws. Always the royal something or other; as at
the menagerie, the Royal Bengal Tiger. Silliman states that "the cold
is so intense in the winter nights, particularly on Cape Diamond, that
the sentinels cannot stand it more than one hour, and are relieved at
the expiration of that time;" "and even, as it is said, at much
shorter intervals, in case of the most extreme cold. " What a natural
or unnatural fool must that soldier be--to say nothing of his
government--who, when quicksilver is freezing and blood is ceasing to
be quick, will stand to have his face frozen, watching the walls of
Quebec, though, so far as they are concerned, both honest and
dishonest men all the world over have been in their beds nearly half a
century,--or at least for that space travelers have visited Quebec
only as they would read history! I shall never again wake up in a
colder night than usual, but I shall think how rapidly the sentinels
are relieving one another on the walls of Quebec, their quicksilver
being all frozen, as if apprehensive that some hostile Wolfe may even
then be scaling the Heights of Abraham, or some persevering Arnold
about to issue from the wilderness; some Malay or Japanese, perchance,
coming round by the northwest coast, have chosen that moment to
assault the citadel! Why, I should as soon expect to find the
sentinels still relieving one another on the walls of Nineveh, which
have so long been buried to the world. What a troublesome thing a wall
is! I thought it was to defend me, and not I it! Of course, if they
had no wall, they would not need to have any sentinels.

You might venture to advertise this farm as well fenced with
substantial stone walls (saying nothing about the eight hundred
Highlanders and Royal Irish who are required to keep them from
toppling down); stock and tools to go with the land if desired. But it
would not be wise for the seller to exhibit his farm-book.

Why should Canada, wild and unsettled as it is, impress us as an older
country than the States, unless because her institutions are old? All
things appeared to contend there, as I have implied, with a certain
rust of antiquity, such as forms on old armor and iron guns,--the rust
of conventions and formalities.