For in Canada there were two civilised populations of nearly equal power, viewing each other with traditionary dislike and distrust: the French habitans of the Lower Province, strong in their connexion with the past, and the British settlers, whose energy and enterprise gave unmistakable promise of predominance in the future.

The natives seem to have a great deal of our dear old French Canadian habitans about them, only in a more sublime stage of infantine simplicity.

Assuredly no one will ever find in this so-called English antitype of the Curé of Meudon any of the deeper qualities of that gloomy and commanding spirit which has been finely compared to the "soul of Rabelais habitans in sicco."