INTRODUCTORY.

ONE of the objects of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, is the prosecution of researches into the early history of Canada, and the recovering, procuring and publishing interesting documents and useful information in connexion with the natural, civil and literary history of British North America. Having, during the past year, been in professional attendance on the late Lieut.-Colonel de Salaberry, Deputy Adjutant General of the Province, and the son of that distinguished Canadian soldier, Lieut.-Colonel Charles Michel de Salaberry, whose name is inseparably connected with Canada as the Victor of Chateauguay, I had many opportunities of conversing with him on that great exploit, as also on the general career of his father. Seeing that I felt so much interest in the subject, Col. de Salaberry placed in my hands certain letters addressed to his father by the late Duke of Kent, and I was thus enabled to prepare a paper which I read before the Society.

After its publication in the "Transactions" of the Society, it became known that there had been placed in my hands by Col. de Salaberry, and his younger brother Charles, a correspondence between the Duke of Kent and members of the de Salaberry family, extending from 1791 to 1814, and a very general opinion was expressed by friends whose opinion I valued, that I should not rest with the publication of the paper which I had read, but should undertake to write a life of the Duke of Kent, based on the materials in my possession.

It has been said that when personal character and habits form the principal subject of interest, a stranger stands at too great a distance to give the portrait a faithful outline or correct coloring, and that a true one can be only pourtrayed by him whose friendly intercourse gave opportunity of marking the peculiar characteristics of the subject. This is undoubtedly to a certain extent true, but it will also be admitted that he who writes his own biography often discloses

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traits of which no other person is cognizant, and gives an insight into his own character which might not otherwise be obtained, and that by letters, we may truly be brought, as it were into personal correspondence with the distant and the dead.

The Duke of Kent was an able and voluminous correspondent, and from the care with which his letters have been preserved, has thus unconsciously become his own biographer; but this biography has hitherto been confined to the limited circles of the families or friends of his correspondents, and the few of his letters which have been published, in his life by the Rev. Erskine Neale, have only excited a desire to see more.

I feel that the valuable correspondence which has been placed in my hands has furnished abundant matter for writing a life; but, after mature deliberation, I have determined simply to hold the mirror up to nature, making myself a mere amanuensis; nothing extenuating and withholding nothing, but giving the true photograph. In the present publication I propose to give the whole of the letters in my possession, not merely all in number, but the contents, merely filling up the narrative where it is obvious some connecting statements are required, and I feel that I can do this without the slightest hesitation, assured there will not be found in the correspondence of the Duke of Kent a single expression calculated to offend the most refined taste, but that every letter will furnish an additional proof of his princely nature and the high and generous qualities which he invariably brought to bear in his intercourse with his fellow men.

THE DUKE OF KENT.

CHAPTER 1.

Birth-Childhood-Early Education-Military Training-Luneberg-Hanover -Geneva-Gibraltar.

ON the evening of Thursday, 11th August, 1791, His Majesty's ships Ulysses and Resolution, seven weeks from Gibraltar, and having on board the 7th Royal Fusileers, commanded by His Royal Highness Prince Edward, rounded Pointe Lévis, when there burst upon the view one of the most charming scenes the eye could dwell upon. On the right was the end of the beautiful Island of Orleans-the Isle of Bacchus of Cartier-studded with the white cottages of the habitants, embowered in trees; on the opposite side of the north channel, on the main land, was seen the snowwhite Fall of Montmorenci, from whence the shore trended with a gentle curve to the mouth of the River St. Charles, or Little River. From the Falls a long straggling line of white cottages skirted the road to the pretty village of Beauport, beyond which rose a lofty range of wooded heights stretching on to Ancient Lorette. On the left, forming the south shore of the basin, rose the picturesque Pointe Lévis, and at the head of the basin, between the Little River and

the mighty St. Lawrence, stood prominently forward Cape Diamond, rising abruptly from the water to the height of three hundred and forty-five feet, surmounted by the Citadel, and the "steep slope down" piled with public and private buildings, the tin roofs of which glittering in the setting sun, gave an appearance of fairy land. The scene was most calculated to impress with pleasurable sensations the Prince, who, during his whole life, shewed a high relish for the picturesque, and who was doubly interested when everywhere he turned his eye rested on ground rendered classic by the military operations of Wolfe and Montcalm.

Prince Edward Augustus, the fourth son of George the Third, was then in the twenty-fifth year of his age, having been born at Buckingham House, on the 2nd November, 1767. The month, says the Rev. Erskine Neale, was gloomy November; but there was gloom also in the Palace, Edward, Duke of York, the favorite brother of the King, was then lying in state in his coffin, and was buried the following day, and the Prince was christened on the 30th of the same month, and was named after his deceased uncle.

At an early period of his life, he was placed under the charge of Mr. Fisher, subsequently Canon of Windsor and Bishop of Exeter and Salisbury; and to this happy circumstance he was indebted for a training which told on his future life, enabling him to meet heroically, if not to surmount, many difficulties, and to bear with Christian fortitude and equanimity the injustice and mortifications to which he was so long subjected. He was noted in childhood (and the child was father to the man) for a frank and generous disposition, and according to his tutor, the love of truth was in him paramount to every consideration.

In the eighteenth year of his age he chose the profession of arms, and was sent to Luneberg in Hanover, to prosecute his studies under the Baron Wangenheim, whom he has described as "an arbitrary and inflexible governor," and "a mercenary tyrant," who enforced with unrelenting severity the wearying and mechanical details of parade and drill.

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Luneberg is described by Mr. Neale as a wretched poverty-stricken place, surrounded by ague breeding marshes, and without society. No wonder then that the Prince was disgusted with his profession and the world; and that he was