r The Catholic Democracy of America,64 - Digital Repository Services

8 Romani Catholicism in America.
Duhamel, the able and refined Archbishop of Ottawa, is a fine
example of the best type of habitant, a Canadian in everything,
even to the pronunciation of his native language. The Cardinal,
on the other hand, is a courtly French prelate of the last century.
A visit at the old palace is a ceremony of some solemnity. The
Vicar-General Père Legaré with graceful urbanity welcomes
the visitor in a sumptuous chamber hung with the portraits of
the occupants of the see of Quebec for more than two hundred
years, beginning with Laval and St. Vallier, till the Cardinal
enters, in his robes of scarlet and violet. For an hour the
dignified old man discourses in the stately French of the last
century, which seems alive again. At one moment his talk is
of the decadence of the times, the perniciousness of modern
literature, but it sounds as if a prelate of old France were
deprecating the growing license of the more recent works of
the author of the Henriade or lamenting that Crébillon's dramas
were supplanting the masterpieces of Racine. The only inharmonious
note is the modern costume of the Cardinal's visitor :
for. the rest the scene is such as is sometimes portrayed on the
walls of the Salon—it is Une audience chez son Éminence sous
Louis Quinze.
I have lingered too long in the fascinating region of Quebec,
but Cardinal Taschereau will be referred to again in connection
with Cardinal Gibbons, so it is as well to give some slight
impression of the head of the mother Church of America and
of his surroundings.
The Church in Ontario has been mentioned, so, hastening
westward, we will not pause until the great lakes are passed
and Winnipeg is reached. A few years hence Manitoba may be
as populous as Illinois, but at present the work of the Church
is chiefly missionary in its character. Archbishop Taché's
suffragans are Frenchmen, not French Canadians, and there is
a vast dissimilarity between the domestic habitants of Quebec
and the half-breed Métis of the Northwest, who are by degrees
giving way to immigrant settlers from every nation of Europe".
Still further westward we go to the Foothills of the Rockies,