Page:Tupper family records - 1835.djvu/40

 22 MEMOIR OF SIR ISAAC BROCK.

Highness the Prince Regent is fully aware of the severe loss which his Majesty's service has expe- rienced in the death of Major-General Sir Isaac Brock. This would have been sufficient to have clouded a victory of much greater importance. His Majesty has lost in him not only an able and meritorious officer, but one who, in the exercise of his functions of provisional lieutenant-governor of the province, displayed qualities admirably adapted to awe the disloyal, to reconcile ths wavering, and to animate the great mass of the inhabitants against successive attempts of the enemy to invade the province, in the last of which he unhappily fell, too prodigal of that life of which his eminent services had taught us to understand the value."

The Canadian boat songs are well known for their plaintive and soothing effect, and a very beautiful one was composed on the death of Major- General Brock. The writer of this memoir, while sailing one evening in the straits of Canso, in British North America, the beautiful and picturesque scenery of which greatly increased the effect of the words, remembers to have heard it sung by a Canadian boatman, and he then thought that he had never listened to vocal sounds more truly descriptive of melancholy and regret.

Sir Isaac Brock, after lying in state at the govern- ment house, where his body was bedewed with the tears of many affectionate friends, was interred, with every military honor, at Fort George, in a cavalier bastion, which he had suggested, and which had been just finished under his daily superintendence. His surviving aid-de-camp, Major J. B. Glegg, at the same time recollecting the decided aversion of the general to every thing that bore the appearance of

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