part in the election contests of his time. His servant Jeffery Hunter,

however, who seems to have had a vote on his own account, was always

despatched promptly to the polling-place to record his vote in favour of

the Tory candidate. The Colonel was a Member of the Legislative Council,

but he seldom or never attended the deliberations of that Body. During

the Administration of Sir John Colborne, when the Liberals of Upper

Canada fought the battles of Reform with such energy and vigour, the

Colonel for a single campaign identified himself with the contest, and

made what seems to have been rather an effective election speech on the

platform at St. Thomas. He traced the history of the settlement, and

referred to his own labours in a fashion which elicited tumultuous

applause from the crowd. He deplored the spread of radical principles,

and expressed his regret that some advocates of those principles had

crept into the neighbourhood. The meeting passed a loyal address to the

Crown, which was dictated by Colonel Talbot himself. This, so far as is

known, was the only political meeting ever attended by him in this

Province.

The Colonel was nominally a member of the Church of England, and

contributed liberally to its support, though, as may well be supposed,

he was never eaten up by his zeal for episcopacy. By some people he was

set down as a freethinker, and by others as a Roman Catholic. The fact

is that the prevailing tone of his mind was not spiritual, and he gave

little thought to matters theological. During the early years of the

settlement, as we have seen, he was wont to read service to the

assembled rustics on Sunday; but this custom was abandoned as soon as

churches began to be accessible to the people of the neighbourhood; and

after that time, though he was occasionally seen at church, he was not

an habitual attendant at public worship. He was fond of good company,

and liked to tell and listen to dubious stories "across the walnuts and

the wine." A clergyman who officiated at a little church about five

miles from Port Talbot was his frequent guest at dinner, until the

Colonel's outrageous jokes and stories proved too much for the clerical

idea of the eternal fitness of things. "It must," says his biographer,

"have been rather a bold venture for a young clergyman to come in

contact with a man of Colonel Talbot's wit and racy humour, and a man

who would startle at the very idea of being priest ridden; in fact, who

would be much more likely to saddle the priest. The reverend gentleman

bore with him a long while, till at length finding that he was not

making any progress with the old gentleman in a religious point of

view--on the contrary, that his sallies of wit became more frequent and

cutting--he left him to get to heaven without his assistance. Colonel

Talbot was never pleased with himself for having said or done anything

to provoke the displeasure of his reverend guest, but being in the habit

at table, after dinner, of smacking his lips over a glass of good port,

and cracking jokes, which extorted from his guest a half approving

smile, he was tempted to exceed the bounds which religious or even

chaste conversation would prescribe, and came so near proving _in vino

veritas_, that the reverend gentleman would never revisit him, although

I believe it was Colonel Talbot's earnest desire that he should."

Bad habits, if not checked in season, have a tendency to grow worse. As

the Colonel advanced in years his liking for strong drink increased to

such an extent that the _in vino veritas_ stage was, we fear, reached

pretty often. To such a state of things his solitary life doubtless

conduced. He had an iron constitution, however, and it does not appear

that his intemperate habits during the evening of his life materially

shortened his days. He lived long enough to see the prosperity of his

settlement fully assured. For many years prior to his death it appears

to have been his cherished desire to bequeath his large estate to one of

the male descendants of the Talbot family, and with this view he invited

one of his sister's sons, Mr. Julius Airey, to come over from England

and reside with him at Port Talbot. This young gentleman accordingly

came to reside there, but the dull, monotonous life he was obliged to

lead, and the Colonel's eccentricities, were ill calculated to engage

the affections of a youth just verging on manhood; and after

rusticating, without companions or equals in either birth or education,

for some time, he returned to England and relinquished whatever claims

he might consider he had on his uncle. Some years later a younger

brother of Julius, Colonel Airey, Military Secretary at the Horse

Guards, ventured upon a similar experiment, and came out to Canada with

his family to live at Port Talbot. About this time the Colonel's health

began seriously to fail, and his habits began to gain greater hold upon

him than ever. As a necessary consequence he became crabbed and

irritable. The uncle and nephew could not get on together. "The former,"

says his biographer, "had been accustomed for the greater portion of his

life to suit the convenience of his domestics, and, in common with the

inhabitants of the country, to dine at noon; the latter was accustomed

to wait for the buglecall, till seven o'clock in the evening. Colonel

Talbot could, on special occasions, accommodate himself to the habits of

his guests, but to be regularly harnessed up for the mess every day was

too much to expect from so old a man; no wonder he kicked in the traces.

He soon came to the determination of keeping up a separate

establishment, and another spacious mansion was erected adjoining

Colonel Airey's, where he might, he thought, live as he pleased. But all

would not do, the old bird had been disturbed in his nest, and he could

not be reconciled." He determined to leave Canada, and to end his days

in the Old World. He transferred the Port Talbot estate, valued at

£10,000, together with 13,000 acres of land in the adjoining township of

Aldborough, to Colonel Airey. This transfer, however, left more than

half of his property in his own hands, and he was still a man of great

wealth. Acting on his determination to leave Canada, he started, in his

eightieth year, for Europe. Upon reaching London, only a day's journey

from Port Talbot, he was prostrated by illness, and was confined to his

bed for nearly a month. He rallied, however, and resumed his journey. In

due time he reached London the Greater. He was accompanied on the voyage

by Mr. George McBeth, the successor to the situation of Jeffery Hunter,

who had died some years before. McBeth had gained complete ascendancy

over the Colonel's failing mind. Being a young man of some education,

and a good deal of finesse, he was treated by his master as a companion

rather than as a servant, and the latter merited his master's regard by

nursing him with much care and attention.

Colonel Talbot remained in London somewhat more than a year, during

which period, as also during his previous visits to England, he renewed

old associations with the friend of his youth, the great Duke. He was

often the latter's guest at Apsley House, and the stern old hero of a

hundred fights delighted in his society. London life, however, was

distasteful to Colonel Talbot, and, after giving it a fair trial, he

once more bade adieu to society and repaired to Canada--always attended

assiduously by George McBeth. Upon reaching the settlement he took

lodgings for himself and his companion in the house of Jeffery Hunter's

widow. Here, cooped up in a small room, on the outskirts of the

magnificent estate which was no longer his own, he received occasional

visits from his old friends. Colonel Airey, meanwhile, had rented the

Port Talbot property to an English gentleman named Saunders, and had

returned to his post at the Horse Guards in England. Mr. Saunders had

several daughters, to one of whom George McBeth paid assiduous court,

and whom he afterwards married. Upon his marriage he removed to London,

accompanied by Colonel Talbot, who resided with him until his death, on

the 6th of February, 1853. When the Colonel's will was opened it was

found that with the exception of an annuity of £20 to Jeffery Hunter's

widow, all his vast estate, estimated at £50,000, had been left to

George McBeth.

The funeral took place on the 9th. On the previous day--the 8th--the

body was conveyed in a hearse from London to Fingal, on the way to Port

Talbot, so as to be ready for interment on the following morning. By

some culpable neglect or mismanagement it was placed for the night in

the barn or granary of the local inn. The settlers were scandalized at

this indignity, and one of them begged, with tears in his eyes, that the

body might be removed to his house, which was close by. The undertaker,

who is said to have been under the influence of liquor, declined to

accede to this request, and the body remained all night in the barn. On

the following morning it was replaced in the hearse and conveyed to Port

Talbot, where it rested for a short time within the walls of Castle

Malahide. A few attached friends from London and other parts of the

settlement attended the coffin to its place of sepulture in the

churchyard at Tyrconnel. The officiating clergyman, the Rev. Mr.

Holland, read the service in a cutting wind, and the ceremony was ended.

A plate on the oaken coffin bore the simple inscription:

THOMAS TALBOT,

FOUNDER OF THE TALBOT SETTLEMENT,

Died 6th February, 1853.

[Illustration: DAVID LAIRD, signed as D. LAIRD]

THE HON. DAVID LAIRD,

_LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF THE NORTH-WEST TERRITORIES._

The Hon. David Laird is the fourth son of the late Hon. Alexander Laird,

a Scottish farmer who, in the year 1819, emigrated from Renfrewshire to

Prince Edward Island. The late Mr. Laird settled in Queen's County,

about sixteen miles from Charlottetown, the capital of the Province, and

devoted himself to agriculture. He was a man of high character and great

influence, alike in political and social matters. For about sixteen

years he represented the First District of Queen's County in the Local

Assembly, and during one Parliamentary term of four years he was a

member of the Executive Council. He was a colleague and supporter of the

Hon. George Coles, who is called the father of Responsible Government in

Prince Edward Island. He was one of the signatories to the petition

forwarded by the Assembly to the Home Government in 1847, praying that

Responsible Government might be conceded; and he had the satisfaction of

sitting in the Assembly on the 25th of March, 1851, when Sir Alexander

Bannerman, the Governor, announced that the prayer of the petition had

been granted. He was also for many years one of the most active members

of the Managing Committee of the Royal Agricultural Society of Prince

Edward, an institution which did much for the advancement of

agricultural industry in the Province, by encouraging the importation of

improved stock, and by other similar operations.

The subject of this sketch was born at the paternal home, near the

village of New Glasgow, Queen's County, in the year 1833. He was

educated at the district school of his native settlement, and afterwards

entered the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church of Nova

Scotia, which was then situated at Truro, in that Province. He completed

his education at the Seminary, and soon afterwards embarked in

journalism at Charlottetown, where he founded a newspaper called _The

Patriot_. Under his editorship and business management this journal

became, in the course of a few years, the leading organ of public

opinion in Prince Edward Island. It advocated Liberal principles, and

was conducted with much energy and ability. The editor had inherited

Liberal ideas from his father, and spoke and wrote on behalf of them

with great effect. After a time he became estranged from the leader of

the Liberal Party, the chief cause of estrangement arising from the

latter's having lent his countenance to some proceedings tending to

exclude the Bible from the Common Schools. All minor causes of

controversy, however, were cast into the shade by the great question of

Confederation. After the close of the Quebec Conference in October,

1864, Mr. Laird took a firm stand against the terms of the scheme agreed

upon by the delegates, in so far as they related to his native Province.

He assigned as his principal reasons for adopting this course the fact

that the terms contained no proposal for the settlement of the Land

Question, which had long been a sore grievance with the tenantry of the

island; and the further fact that no provision was made for the

construction of public works, although the island could be called upon

to contribute its quota of taxation towards the Intercolonial Railway,

the canals, and the Pacific Railway. He took an active part in the

promotion of sanitary and other local improvements, and was for some

years a member of the Charlottetown City Council. His first entry into

Parliamentary life took place in 1871. The then-existing Government,

under the leadership of the Hon. James Colledge Pope (the present

Minister of Marine and Fisheries in the Dominion Government), had

carried a measure for the construction of the Prince Edward Island

Railway, running nearly the entire length of the island. This project

Mr. Laird had opposed, on the ground that it should have been first

submitted to the people at the polls, and also because he regarded the

undertaking as beyond the resources of the Province. The Government,

however, had carried the Bill providing for the construction of the road

through the House during the previous session, and the surveyors and

Commissioners had been appointed. The Chairman of the Commissioners, the

Hon. James Duncan, represented the constituency of Belfast in the

Legislative Assembly, and was obliged to return to his constituents for

reëlection after accepting office. Mr. Laird offered himself as a

candidate in opposition to the Government nominee. His candidature was

successful. The Commissioner was defeated, and Mr. Laird secured a seat

in the Assembly. A good deal of dissatisfaction had been excited by the

proceedings of the Local Government in connection with the construction

of the road, the result being that Mr. Pope, when he next met the House,

found he had lost the confidence of the majority, and being defeated, he

dissolved the House and appealed to the country. The appeal was

disastrous to his policy, a majority of the members returned being

hostile to his Government. Among these was Mr. Laird, who was elected a

second time for Belfast. A new Government was formed with Mr. R. P.

Haythorne as Premier. During the following autumn Mr. Laird accepted

office in this Government, and was sworn in as a Member of the Executive

Council in November, 1872. Finding that if the railway were proceeded

with on the credit of Prince Edward Island alone, the Provincial

finances would be seriously embarrassed, the new Ministers responded

favourably to an invitation from Ottawa to reconsider the question of

Union. Mr. Laird formed one of the delegation which proceeded to Ottawa

and negotiated terms of Union with the Dominion Government. After the

return of the delegates the Local House was dissolved in order that the

terms agreed upon might be submitted to the people. A good deal of

finesse was practised by the Opposition, and various side issues were

imported into the election contest. The result was the return of a

majority hostile to Mr. Haythorne's Ministry, and Mr. Pope again

succeeded to the reins of Government. Under his auspices the terms of

Union were slightly modified, and Prince Edward Island entered

Confederation.

Mr. Laird had meanwhile succeeded to the leadership of the Liberal

Party. The House did not divide, however, on the question of

Confederation, and both Parties concurred in supporting the measure. Mr.

Laird resigned his seat in the Local Legislature, and offered himself as

a candidate for the House of Commons for the electoral district of

Queen's County. He was returned by a large majority, and on the opening

of the second session of the second Parliament of the Dominion, in

October, 1873, he took his seat in the House of Commons at Ottawa. The

Pacific Scandal disclosures followed, and Sir John A. Macdonald's

Government made way for that of the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie. In the new

Administration Mr. Laird accepted the portfolio of Minister of the

Interior, and was sworn into office on the 7th of November. Upon

returning to his constituents in Queen's County he was returned by

acclamation. He was again returned by acclamation at the general

election of 1874. He retained his office of Minister of the Interior

until the 7th of October, 1876, when he was appointed by the

Governor-General to the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-West

Territories. This position he has ever since filled with the best

results to the Dominion. During his tenure of office as Minister of the

Interior he carried several important measures through Parliament,

and--in the summer of 1874--effected an important Treaty with the

Indians of the North-West, whereby he secured to the Crown the

possession of a tract of 75,500 square miles in extent, and thus

guaranteed the peaceable possession of a large portion of the route of

the Canada Pacific Railway and its accompanying telegraph lines.

In 1864 Mr. Laird married Mary Louisa, second daughter of the late Mr.

Thomas Owen, who was for many years Postmaster-General of Prince Edward

Island. An elder brother of the Lieutenant-Governor, the Hon. Alexander

Laird, held office in the late Local Government of Prince Edward Island,

and at present represents the Second District of Prince, in the Local

Assembly.

THE HON. CHARLES E. B. DE BOUCHERVILLE.

The Bouchers and De Bouchervilles for over two hundred years have played

no unimportant part in the history of Canada. Lieutenant-General Pierre

Boucher, Sieur de Grobois, Governor of Three Rivers in 1653, the founder

of the Seigniory of Boucherville, and a man of great influence in his

day, was one of the most noted members of the family. The late Hon. P.

Boucher de Boucherville, for many years a Legislative Councillor of

Lower Canada, was the father of the subject of this sketch, who was born

at Boucherville, Province of Quebec, in 1820. He was educated at St.

Sulpice College, Montreal. He subsequently went to Paris, pursued his

studies in the medical profession there, and graduated with high

honours. He has been married twice, first to Miss Susanne Morrogh,

daughter of Mr. R. L. Morrogh, Advocate, of Montreal; and after her

death, to Miss C. Luissier, of Varennes. In 1861 he was elected to the

House of Assembly for the county of Chambly. He continued to represent

this constituency until 1867, when he entered the Legislative Council,

and became a member of Mr. Chauveau's Ministry, with the office of

Speaker of the Council, which position he held until February, 1873. On

the reconstruction of the Cabinet, September 22nd, 1874, he was

entrusted with the formation of a Ministry. This duty he accomplished

successfully, taking for himself the portfolio of Secretary and

Registrar, and Minister of Public Instruction. On the 27th January,

1876, he changed his portfolio for that of Agriculture and Public Works.

In February, 1879, he was called to the Senate, an honour which he

accepted without resigning his seat in the Legislative Council.

The De Boucherville Ministry remained in power until the 4th of March,

1878, when it was summarily dismissed by the Hon. Luc Letellier de St.

Just, Lieutenant-Governor of the Province, for reasons which appeared to

him to be just. The facts with reference to this matter have been

detailed in the sketch of the life of Mr. Letellier, contained in the

first volume of this work. On the refusal of Mr. De Boucherville to name

a successor, Mr. Letellier called in the Hon. Henri Gustave Joly of

Lotbinière, and invited him to form a Ministry. In October, 1879, the

ex-Premier and his friends succeeded in defeating the Liberal

Government. A Conservative Ministry was formed, in whose councils,

however, Mr. De Boucherville has taken no part, though his efforts to

drive from power the Liberal Administration were conspicuously displayed

in the Upper Chamber of the Province. He is a good speaker, precise,

moderate and adroit. He is skilful in defence and equally skilful in

attack. His administrative capacity is considerable, and the duties of

the several offices which he has held at various intervals, have been

ably and industriously performed.

[Illustration: SAMUEL NELLES, signed as S. S. NELLES]

THE REV. SAMUEL NELLES, D.D., LL.D.,

_PRESIDENT OF VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, COBOURG._

Dr. Nelles's life, like that of most men of purely scholastic pursuits,

has been comparatively uneventful, and does not form a very fruitful

field for biographical purposes. It has, however, been an eminently

useful one, and has been attended with results most beneficial to the

educational establishment with which his name has long been associated,

and over which he has presided for a continuous period of thirty years.

He is of German descent, on both the paternal and maternal sides. His

paternal grandparents emigrated from Germany to the State of New York

sometime during the last century, and settled in the historic valley of

the Mohawk, where some of their descendants still reside. There Dr.

Nelles's father, the late Mr. William Nelles, was born, and there he

passed the early years of his life. He married Miss Mary Hardy, who was

also of German stock on the mother's side, and was born in the State of

Pennsylvania. By this lady he had a numerous family, the eldest son

being the subject of this sketch. The parents emigrated from New York

State to Upper Canada soon after the close of the War of 1812-15, and

devoted themselves to farming pursuits. The Doctor was born at the

family homestead, in the quiet little village of Mount Pleasant--known

to the Post Office Department as Mohawk--in what is now the township of

Brantford, in the county of Brant, about five miles south-west of the

present city of Brantford, on the 17th of October, 1823. At the present

day, the schools of Mount Pleasant will bear comparison with those of

many places of much larger population; but fifty years ago, when young

Samuel Nelles was in attendance there, they were like most other schools

in the rural districts of Upper Canada--that is to say, they afforded no

facilities for anything beyond a very rudimentary educational training.

Such as they were, however, they furnished the only means of instruction

at his command until he had entered upon his seventeenth year. Previous

to that time he had lived at home, attending school and assisting his

father in farm work. He had, however, displayed great fondness for

study, and had, by dint of his natural ability and steady application,

made greater progress than could have been made by any boy who was not

possessed by an ardent thirst for knowledge. His parents accordingly

resolved that he should have an opportunity of following out the natural

bent of his mind. In 1839 he was placed at Lewiston Academy, in the

State of New York, where he spent an industrious year, and where he had

for a tutor the brilliant, witty and humorous John Godfrey Saxe. Mr.

Saxe was not then known to the world as a poet, but he was an

accomplished philologist, and was reading for the Bar. He had just

graduated at Middlebury College, Vermont, and was teaching

_belles-lettres_ in the Lewiston Academy contemporaneously with the

prosecution of his legal studies. In October, 1840, young Nelles

transferred himself to an academy at Fredonia, in Chautauqua county,

N.Y., where he remained ten months. In the following October (1841) he

entered the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, at Lima, N.Y., where he devoted

his time chiefly to Classics, Mathematics, English Literature and

Criticism. Having spent a profitable year at Lima, he entered Victoria

College, Cobourg--which was then under the Presidency of the Rev.

Egerton Ryerson--in the autumn of 1842. He was one of the first two

matriculated students at the institution, which had just been

incorporated as a University. After an Arts course of two years at

Victoria College, and a year spent in study at home, he attended for

some time at the University of Middletown, Connecticut, where he

graduated as B.A. in 1846. He then spent a year as a teacher in Canada,

and took charge of the Newburgh Academy, in the county of Lennox. In

June, 1847, he entered the ministry of the Wesleyan Methodist Church,

and was placed in charge of a congregation at Port Hope, where he

remained for a year. He was then transferred to the old Adelaide Street

Church, Toronto, where he laboured for two years. Thence he was

transferred to London, but had only resided there about three months

when, in the month of September, 1850, he was appointed President of

Victoria College. This important and responsible position he has held

ever since.

At the time of his taking office, the institution was by no means in a

flourishing condition. It was carried on under circumstances of great

difficulty and embarrassment, and had a competent administrator not been

found to take charge of it, its future would have been very

problematical. An improvement in its condition, however, was perceptible

from the time when Mr. Nelles took the management. It has continued to

prosper ever since, and has long ago taken rank among the most

noteworthy educational institutions in the Dominion. At the time of

Professor Nelles's appointment there was only a single

Faculty--Arts--and the attendance was very small. The teachers were only

five in number. The Professor's vigorous administration soon effected a

marked change for the better. In 1854 the Faculty of Medicine was added.

It at first embraced only one medical college, which was presided over

for many years by the late Dr. Rolph. In process of time a second

institution, L'École de Médecine et de Chirurgie, Montreal, became

affiliated, and still continues to hold the same relationship to the

University. A Law Faculty was added in 1862, and in 1872 a Faculty of

Theology.

When Professor Nelles became President he at the same time became

Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, Logic, and the Evidences of

Religion. These subjects he has continued to teach ever since, with the

addition, since 1872, of Homiletics. He has devoted his life to the task

of building up the institution, and has been ably seconded by the staff

of teachers whom he has from time to time gathered about him. Until

comparatively recent times there was no endowment fund, and the College

had to depend for its support solely on tuition fees, on the annual

contributions of the ministers and people of the Wesleyan Methodist

Body, and on a Parliamentary grant which Victoria College, in common

with other denominational schools, had been wont to receive. After

Confederation, all grants to denominational colleges were discontinued,

and Victoria College was left almost entirely unprovided for. At a

meeting of the Methodist Conference it was proposed by President Nelles

that an appeal should be made to the people for contributions to an

endowment fund. The proposal was adopted by the Conference, and the Rev.

Dr. Punshon, who was then resident in Canada, took an active personal

interest in the movement. He contributed $3,000 out of his own pocket,

and made a personal tour through part of Ontario, holding public

meetings, whereby a sum of $50,000 was secured. Several other Methodist

ministers followed his example, and the fund steadily increased. In

1873, however, the amount was still insufficient, and the Rev. Joshua H.

Johnson was appointed by the Conference to make further collections. Mr.

Johnson entered upon his task, and pursued it with great vigour. His

efforts were supplemented by a munificent bequest of $30,000 from the

late Mr. Edward Jackson, of Hamilton. The requisite amount was

eventually obtained, and the future of Victoria College secured.

The erection of Faraday Hall, at a cost of $25,000, chiefly for

Scientific purposes, marks a new epoch in the history of Victoria

College. This Hall was formally opened on the 29th of May, 1878. Dr.

Haanel, a distinguished German Professor, was placed in charge of the

scientific department, and the results of his teaching are already

apparent in an awakened interest in scientific matters displayed by the

students of the College.

Upon the whole, Dr. Nelles may well be pardoned if he looks back upon

his thirty years' Presidency of Victoria College with a considerable

degree of complacency. To him, more than to anyone else, is due its

present state of prosperity and enlarged efficiency. He has also taken a

warm interest in educational matters unconnected with the College, and

his influence is perceptibly felt in all the local schools. He was for

two successive years elected President of the Teachers' Association of

Ontario, and his views on all matters pertaining to public instruction

are held in high respect.

Dr. Nelles was chosen a delegate to represent the Canadian Conference at

the General Methodist Conference held at Philadelphia in 1864, at the

New Brunswick Conference of 1866, and at the English Wesleyan Conference

held at Newcastle in 1873. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was

conferred upon him by the University of Queen's College, Kingston, in

1860. His Doctor's degree in Law was conferred upon him in 1873 by the

University of Victoria College. He is the author of a popular text-book

on Logic, and has frequently contributed to periodical literature. He

enjoys high repute as a lecturer, more especially on educational

subjects; and his sermons, some of which have been published, are said

to be of an exceptionally high order.

On the 3rd of July, 1851, he married Miss Mary B. Wood, daughter of the

Rev. Enoch Wood, of Toronto, by whom he has a family of five children.

THE HON. WILLIAM HUME BLAKE.

The late Chancellor Blake, one of the most distinguished jurists that

ever sat on the Canadian Bench, was a member of an Irish family, known

as the Blakes of Cashelgrove, in the county of Galway. The family was

well connected and stood high among the county magnates. Sometime about

the middle of the last century, Dominick Edward Blake, its chief

representative, married the Hon. Miss Netterville, daughter of Lord

Netterville, of Drogheda. After her death, he married a second wife, who

was a daughter of Sir Joseph Hoare, Baronet, of Annabella, in the county

of Cork. By this lady he had four sons, one of whom, christened Dominick

Edward, after his father, took orders as a clergyman of the Church of

England, and became Rector and Rural Dean of Kiltegan and

Loughbrickland. This gentleman married Miss Anne Margaret Hume, eldest

daughter of Mr. William Hume, of Humewood, M.P. for the county of

Wicklow. During the progress of the rebellion of 1798, Mr. Hume sent his

children to Dublin for safety, and took personal command of a corps of

yeomanry raised in his county. He fell a victim to his loyalty, and was

shot near his own residence at Humewood by some rebels of whom he was in

pursuit. Lord Charlemont, in a published letter, alluded to this

deplorable event as "the murder of Hume, the friend and favourite of his

country," and characterized it as an "example of atrocity which exceeded

all that went before it."

William Hume Blake, the subject of this memoir, was the grandson and

namesake of the unfortunate gentleman above referred to, and was one of

the fruits of the marriage of his father, the Rev. D. E. Blake, to Miss

Hume. He was born at the Rectory, at Kiltegan, County Wicklow, on the

10th of March, 1809. He was the second son of his parents, his elder

brother, Dominick Edward, being named in honour of his father and

paternal grandfather. The elder brother emulated his father's example,

and became a clergyman of the Church of England. The younger, after

receiving his education at Trinity College, Dublin, studied surgery

under Surgeon-General Sir Philip Crampton. Surgery, however, was not

much to his taste. The accompaniments of that profession--notably the

coarse jokes and experiments which he was daily called upon to encounter

in the dissecting-room--proved at last so repulsive to his nature that

he abandoned surgery altogether, and entered upon a course of

theological study with a view to entering the Church. His studies had

not proceeded far, however, before he and his elder brother determined

to emigrate to Canada. This determination was carried out in the summer

of 1832. A short time before leaving his native land, the younger

brother married his cousin, Miss Catharine Hume, the granddaughter--as

he himself was the grandson--of the William Hume whose tragical death

has already been recorded. This lady, who shared alike the struggles

and triumphs of her distinguished husband till the close of his earthly

career, still survives.

The Blake brothers were induced to emigrate to this country, partly

because their prospects at home were not particularly bright, partly in

consequence of the strong inducements held out by the then

Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, Sir John Colborne. The

representations of Major Jones, the elder brother's father-in-law,

doubtless contributed something to the result. The Major was a retired

officer who had served in this country during the war of 1812-'13-'14,

and had taken part in the battles of Queenston Heights and Lundy's Lane.

He was fond of fighting his battles over again by his own fireside and

that of his son-in-law. He was never weary of enlarging on the beauty

and primitive wildness of Canadian scenery, the pleasures and freedom

from conventionality of a life spent in the backwoods, and the brilliant

prospects awaiting young men of courage, energy, endurance, and ability,

in the wilds of Upper Canada. The Blake brothers were Irishmen, and were

gifted with the national vividness of imagination. They doubtless

pictured to themselves the delights of "a lodge in some vast

wilderness," where game of all sorts was abundant, and where game laws

had no existence. They had of course no adequate conception of the

struggles and trials incident to pioneer life. They were not alone in

their notions about Canada. Many of their friends and acquaintances

about this time became imbued with a desire to emigrate, and upon taking

counsel together they found that there were enough of them to form a

small colony by themselves. Having made all necessary arrangements they

chartered a vessel--the _Ann_, of Halifax--and sailed for the St.

Lawrence in the month of July, 1832. Among the friends and relations of

the brothers Blake embarked on board were their mother, who had been

left a widow; their sister and her husband, the late Archdeacon Brough;

the late Mr. Justice Connor; the Rev. Benjamin Cronyn, late Bishop of

Huron; and the Rev. Mr. Palmer, Archdeacon of Huron. After a six weeks'

voyage they reached the mouth of the St. Lawrence, whence by slow

degrees they made their way to Little York, as the Upper Canadian

capital was then called. Here they remained until the following spring,

when they divided their forces. Some of them remained in York;

others--including Mr. Connor and Mr. Brough--proceeded northward to the

township of Oro, on Lake Simcoe; and others settled on the Niagara

peninsula. The elder Blake had meanwhile been appointed by the

Lieutenant-Governor to a Rectory in the township of Adelaide, and there

he accordingly pitched his tent. His brother, the subject of this

sketch, purchased a farm in the same part of the country, at a place on

Bear Creek--now called Sydenham River--near the present site of the

village of Katesville, or Mount Hope, in the county of Middlesex. He

then had an opportunity of realizing the full delights of a life in the

Canadian backwoods. "With whatever romantic ideas of the delights of

such a life Mr. Hume Blake had determined on making Canada his home,"

says a contemporary Canadian author, "they were soon dispelled by the

rough experiences of the reality. The settler in the remotest section of

Ontario to-day has no conception of the struggles and hardships that

fell to the lot of men who, accustomed to all the refinements of life,

found themselves cut off from all traces of civilization in a land,

since settled and cultivated, but then so wild that between what are now

populous cities there existed only an Indian trail through the forest.

Mr. Blake was not a man to be easily discouraged, but soon found that

his talents were being wasted in the wilderness. In after years he was

fond of telling of the rude experiences of life in the bush, and among

other incidents how that he had, on one occasion, walked to the

blacksmith's shop before mentioned to obtain a supply of harrow-pins,

and, finding them too heavy to carry, had fastened them to a chain,

which he put round his neck, and so dragged them home through the

woods."

It was during the residence of the family at Bear Creek that the eldest

son, Edward, was born,[5] but he was not destined to receive his

educational training amid such surroundings. While he was still an

infant the family removed to Toronto. A life in the backwoods had been

tried, and was found to be unsuited to the genius and ambition of a man

like William Hume Blake. He had tried surgery, divinity, and

agriculture, and had not taken kindly to any of those pursuits. He now

resolved to attempt the law, and commenced his legal studies in the

office of the late Mr. Washburn, a well-known lawyer in those days.

During the troubles of 1837 he was, we believe, for a short time

paymaster of a battalion, but fortunately there was no occasion for his

active services. In 1838 he was called to the Bar of Upper Canada, and

was not long in making his way to a foremost position. His rivals at the

Bar were among the foremost counsel who have ever practised in this

Province, and included Mr. (afterwards Chief Justice) Draper, Mr.

(afterwards Judge) Sullivan, Mr. Henry John Boulton, Mr. (now Chief

Justice) Hagarty, Robert Baldwin, Henry Eccles, and John Hillyard

Cameron. Mr. Blake soon proved his ability to hold his own against all

comers. He enjoyed some personal advantages which stood him in good

stead, both while he was fighting his way and afterwards. His tall,

handsome person, and fine open face, his felicitous language, and bold

manly utterance gained him at once the full attention of both Court and

Jury; and his vigorous grasp of the whole case under discussion, his

acute, logical dissection of the evidence, and the thorough earnestness

with which he always threw himself into his client's case, swept

everything before them. In the days when such men as Draper, Sullivan,

Baldwin and Eccles were at the Bar, it was something to stand among the

foremost. Mr. Blake became associated in business with Mr. Joseph C.

Morrison--now one of the Judges of the Court of Queen's Bench--and some

years later, his relative, the late Dr. Connor, who in 1863 became one

of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, entered the firm. Business

poured in, and the number of Mr. Blake's briefs increased in almost

geometrical proportion. His arguments were of due weight with the judges

of those times, but with juries his force was irresistible. Many

incidents have been related of his forensic triumphs. Among other cases

recorded by the writer already quoted from, that of Kerby vs. Lewis

occupies a conspicuous place. The question at issue was Mr. Kerby's

right to monopolize a ferry communication between Fort Erie and some

point on the American shore. This right the defendant contested, and

employed Mr. Blake to conduct his case. The judges appear to have leaned

strongly to the side of the plaintiff, and granted a succession of new

trials, as, on each occasion, Mr. Blake's telling appeals to their

sympathy with the defendant, as the champion of free intercourse between

the two countries, extorted from the juries a verdict in favour of his

client. It is said that the Court finally refused to grant any further

new trials in sheer hopelessness of any jury being found to reverse the

original finding.

Another proof of his energy and ingenuity was given in the Webb arson

case, which made a considerable noise at the time. Webb was the owner

of a shoe store in Toronto. Having on more than one occasion obtained

compensation from fire insurance companies for losses he had sustained,

suspicion was excited against him, and, on another fire occurring, the

companies decided on prosecuting. Webb retained Mr. Blake. The theory of

the defence was that a stove-pipe from the adjoining store, which

connected with Webb's premises, had become heated, and had ignited some

"rubbers" hanging in the vicinity. The prosecution denied that "rubbers"

were combustible in any such sense as the defence represented. To put

his theory beyond a doubt, Mr. Blake, on the evening before the trial,

had set his two boys, Edward and Samuel, to look up every piece of

information they could obtain from encyclopaedias or other sources as to

the properties of rubber. Then an old pair of "rubbers" was procured,

experiments were engaged in, and both father and sons were occupied

during the greater part of the night in their investigations, to the no

small discomfort of the other members of the household. When the trial

came on next day, after the case for the prosecution had been presented,

Mr. Blake began his defence. He dissected the prosecutor's evidence with

an amazing fund of irony and sarcasm, and requested the jury to place as

little reliance on the general testimony for the prosecution as they

would soon do on the theory of "rubbers" being non-combustible. Then a

candle and a pair of old "rubbers" were produced; a few strips cut from

the latter were held in the flame, and the interested crowd of

spectators saw them burn. The jury accepted this as sufficient, at all

events, to cast doubts on the whole case against the prisoner, and Webb

was acquitted.

The "Markham gang," as they were called, are still well remembered by

the older inhabitants of Toronto and the adjoining country. In several

of the prosecutions arising out of the outrages of the gang, Mr. Blake

was defending counsel, and invested the defence with additional

interest, in the eyes of the legal profession, by raising the question

of the admissibility of the evidence of an accomplice. Another case

which showed the earnestness and conscientiousness of Mr. Blake, who

prosecuted, was the trial of two persons--a man named McDermott and a

girl named Grace Marks--charged with the murder of Mr. Kinnear and his

housekeeper, near Richmond Hill, in the year 1843.[6] Not content with

secondhand information, the hard-working lawyer devoted the only holiday

which intervened between the committal of the prisoners and the trial to

a careful and minute examination of the house and premises where the

murder had occurred, so that in going into court he had the most perfect

familiarity with every detail connected with the crime. The prisoners

were convicted; the man suffered the extreme penalty of the law, and the

woman, who was reprieved, was only liberated from the Penitentiary after

an incarceration of twenty years. No man could more readily seize hold

of the salient points of a case presented to him; few could make so much

out of a small and apparently insignificant point; but no one ever made

the business before him the subject of more patient study or more

exhaustive attention. Honourable and high-minded himself, he sought to

inspire those about him with the same feelings. He endeavoured at all

times to encourage a gentlemanly bearing in the young men who studied

under him, and would tolerate nothing inconsistent with perfect fairness

and honesty in transacting the business of the office.

Mr. Blake and his partners were all active members of the Liberal Party.

In the early contests for Municipal Institutions, National Education,

Law Reform and all progressive measures, they took an earnest part--and

in the struggle with Lord Metcalfe and his Tory abettors for the

establishment of British Parliamentary Government in Canada, they did

excellent service to the popular cause. Mr. Blake, at the general

election of 1844, was the Reform candidate for the second Riding of

York--now the county of Peel--but was defeated by a narrow majority on

the second day of polling by his Tory opponent, Mr. George Duggan. A

little later, he contested unsuccessfully the county of Simcoe, in

opposition to the Hon. W. B. Robinson. At the general election of 1847,

while absent in England, he was returned by a large majority for the

East Riding of York--now the county of Ontario. The result of that

election was the entire overthrow of the Conservative Government, and

the accession of the Liberal Party to power, under Messrs. Baldwin and

Lafontaine, on the 10th of March, 1848. Mr. Blake became

Solicitor-General under the new arrangement, and was duly reëlected for

East York. Then followed the struggle over the famous Rebellion Losses

Bill. In that contest Mr. Blake took an active part in support of Lord

Elgin, who was so outrageously treated by the Opposition leaders in

Parliament, and by the mob of Montreal that followed in their wake. For

his powerful advocacy of the Governor-General, and his scathing

diatribes against the tactics of the Opposition, he was fiercely

denounced by the Conservative leaders. So far was this denunciation

carried that a hostile meeting between Mr. Blake and Mr. Macdonald--the

present Sir John A. Macdonald--was only prevented by the interference of

the Speaker of the House. The Opposition press, without the slightest

justification, published articles in which the writers professed to

believe that Mr. Blake was wanting in courage, and afraid to meet his

antagonist in the field. The _Globe_, which was the organ of the

Government in those days, replied in a spirit which did it honour. In an

article written by the late Mr. Brown himself, and published in the

_Globe_ on the 28th of March, 1849, we find these words: "The repeated

insinuations against the courage of Mr. Blake, to use the ordinary

phrase, are as untrue as they are base and ungenerous. We are quite

aware of all the circumstances of what was so near leading to one of

those transactions called affairs of honour. We know, and we state it

with regret, that there was, on Mr. Blake's part, no wish to shrink from

the consequences of the intended affair, but a great anxiety to meet it.

We would have thought it far more creditable to him, and far more

becoming the station he holds in the councils of the Province, if he had

exhibited that higher courage which would shrink from being concerned in

an affair which, however it may be glossed over by the sophistry and the

practice of the world, is a crime of the deepest dye against the law of

God and the well-being of society."

The Court of Chancery for Upper Canada had been for years a mark for

scorn and derision on account of the personal deficiencies of Mr.

Vice-Chancellor Jameson, and the lack of organization in the whole

Chancery system. The Baldwin-Lafontaine Government undertook the reform

of the Court, increased the number of Judges to three, and gave it the

improved system of procedure which has earned for the Court its present

efficiency and popularity. When the measure became law, the question

arose as to who should be appointed to the seats on the Bench that had

been created. There was but one answer in the profession. Mr. Blake was

universally pointed out as the man best fitted for the post of

Chancellor. He accepted the Chancellorship of Upper Canada on the 30th

of September, 1849, which he continued to fill until the 18th of March,

1862, when failing health compelled him to retire. There were not

wanting political opponents who declared that Mr. Blake had created the

office that he might fill it; but all who knew the man and the position

in which he stood were aware that it was with extreme reluctance he

accepted the place. As his great judicial talents came to be recognized

the voice of the slanderer ceased, and the services which he rendered on

the Bench will, we doubt not, be now heartily acknowledged by all

parties. Mr. Jameson for a short time continued to sit on the Bench as

Vice-Chancellor, side by side with Mr. Blake. In the month of December,

1850, he was permitted to retire on a pension of £750 a year.

Mr. Blake, while at the Bar, held for a number of years the position of

Professor of Law in the University of Toronto, but resigned it when he

became Solicitor-General. He took a deep interest in all the affairs of

the University, of which he was for a long time the able and popular

Chancellor.

Afflicted with gout in its most distressing form, Mr. Blake, after his

retirement from the Bench, sought relief from his sufferings in milder

climes. He returned to Canada in 1869, but it was evident that his end

was not far distant. He died in Toronto, on the 17th of November, 1870.

The late Chancellor Vankoughnet paid an eloquent tribute to his memory.

"With an intellect fitting him to grasp more readily than most men the

whole of a case," said Mr. Vankoughnet, "he was yet most patient and

painstaking in the investigation of every case heard before him. He

never spared himself; but was always most careful that no suitor should

suffer wrong through any lack of diligence on his part. He had,

moreover--what every Equity judge should have--a high appreciation of

the duties and functions of the Court--of the mission, if I may so term

it, of a Court of Equity in this country: not to adjudicate drily upon

the case before the Court, but so to expound the principles of Equity

Law as to teach men to deal justly and equitably between themselves. I

have reason to believe that such expositions of the principles upon

which this Court acts have had a salutary influence upon the country;

and Mr. Blake, in the able and lucid judgments delivered by him,

contributed largely to this result. He always bore in mind that to which

the present Lord Chancellor of England gave expression in one of his

judgments--'The standard by which parties are tried here, either as

trustees or corporations, or in various other relations which may be

suggested, is a standard, I am thankful to say, higher than the standard

of the world.'"

THE REV. ALEXANDER TOPP, D.D.

The life of the late Dr. Topp, like the lives of most members of his

sacred calling, was comparatively uneventful. He was born at

Sheriffmill, a farm-house near the historic old town of Elgin, in

Morayshire, Scotland, in the year 1815. He was educated at the Elgin

Academy, the present representative of the old Grammar School of the

burgh, and an establishment of much local repute. Thence, in his

fifteenth year, he passed to King's College, Aberdeen--an institution

affiliated with the University--where he passed through a very

creditable course, winning one of the highest scholarships, and

retaining it for four years. In 1836, immediately upon attaining his

majority, he received a license to preach, and was appointed assistant

to the minister of one of the churches in Elgin. This minister soon

afterwards died, leaving the pastorate vacant. The abilities and zeal of

his young assistant had made themselves recognized, and it was thought

desirable that the latter should succeed to the vacant charge. The

appointment was hedged in with certain restrictions, and was at the

disposal of Government. A petition from the congregation and from the

Town Council was successful, and Mr. Topp was inducted into the charge.

Upon the disruption in 1843 he seceded from the Establishment, and

carried over with him nearly the entire congregation, which erected a

new church and manse for him. He continued in this charge until 1852,

when he removed to Edinburgh, having accepted a pressing call from the

Roxburgh Church there. Here he continued to minister for about six

years, during which period his congregation increased to such an extent

as to render the accommodation insufficient. A project for erecting a

new and larger church was set on foot, but before it had been fully

matured Mr. Topp had accepted a call from the congregation of Knox

Church, Toronto. This was in 1858. Two years before that date he had

received a pressing call from the same quarter, which he had then

thought proper to decline. At the time of entering upon his charge in

Toronto the membership of Knox Church was only about three hundred.

Under his ministry there was a steadily perceptible increase, and at the

time of his death the membership was in the neighbourhood of seven

hundred. His abilities commanded recognition beyond the limits of his

own congregation, and he steadily won his way to position and influence

in the community. In 1868 he was elected Moderator of the General

Assembly of the Canada Presbyterian Church, and thus afforded the first

instance of a unanimous nomination by the various Presbyteries to that

office. He took a prominent part in the movement to bring about the

Union between the Canada Presbyterian Church and the Church of Scotland,

and the successful realization of that project was in no small degree

due to his exertions. In 1876 he was elected Moderator to the General

Assembly of the United Church. His doctor's degree was conferred upon

him in 1870 by the University of Aberdeen, where he had been so

successful a student forty years previously.

For several years prior to his death Dr. Topp's constitution had given

unmistakable symptoms of having become seriously impaired. In the autumn

of 1877 his physicians acquainted him with the fact that he was

suffering from a mortal disease--organic disease of the heart--but it

was not supposed that the malady had made such progress as to endanger

his life for some years to come. In the early summer of 1879 he paid a

visit to his native land, and of course spent some time in Elgin,

renewing the pleasant associations of his youth. He received many

pressing overtures to preach, but the state of his health formed a

sufficient excuse for his declining. One Sunday, however, contrary to

the advice of a local medical practitioner, he consented to occupy the

pulpit, and preached a long and vigorous sermon to his old congregation.

His audience was very large, and his nervous system was naturally

wrought up to a high pitch. It is believed that his efforts on that

occasion materially shortened his life. Immediately after his return to

his home in Toronto he sent in his resignation as pastor of Knox Church,

but it had not been accepted ere the shades of death closed around him.

The end came more suddenly than had been anticipated. He passed away on

the 6th of October, 1879, while reclining on a sofa in the house of one

of his parishioners. His death was very calm, and apparently free from

all pain. He left behind him a name which will long be borne in

affectionate remembrance by the members of the Presbyterian Church in

Canada. He was kind and gentle in his demeanour, and was loved the most

by them who knew him best. At the time of his death he had been pastor

of Knox Church for more than twenty-one years, during the greater part

of which he had laboured assiduously in all the various fields connected

with his sacred calling. He was open-handed in his charities, and was an

invaluable consoler in the sick-room. He literally died in harness, for

death came upon him while he was paying a pastoral visit to a member of

his congregation.

The _Canada Presbyterian_, which may be presumed to reflect the opinions

of Canadian Presbyterians generally, concluded an obituary notice

written immediately after his death in the following words: "The name of

Dr. Topp will never be forgotten in this country. While we regret that

he has so suddenly been called away, we rejoice that in his case there

are left to us so many happy remembrances of a useful and honourable

career, and that he has bequeathed to the youthful ministry of the

Church the example of a brave and faithful servant of Christ."

THE HON. HENRI GUSTAVE JOLY.

Since Confederation the Hon. Mr. Joly has occupied a prominent position

in the politics of the Province of Quebec. His high morality, integrity

of character, and fine social qualities, have created for him a

reputation which it is the lot of few public men to enjoy. He is

conspicuous in the history of Quebec as the instrument through whose

exertions the Liberal Party were restored to power for the first time

since the Union. He is also noteworthy as being the Minister on whom

devolved the office of selecting a Government to succeed the De

Boucherville Administration, upon its dismissal by Mr. Letellier in the

month of March, 1878.

He was born in France on the 5th of December, 1829, and is the son of

the late Gaspard Pierre Gustave Joly, Seigneur of Lotbinière, and Julie

Christine, daughter of the late Hon. M. E. G. A. Chartier de Lotbinière,

who was Speaker of the Quebec Assembly from 1794 until May, 1797, and

was afterwards a prominent member of the Legislative Council. Mr. Joly

received a liberal education at Paris, and while yet very young removed

with his parents to Canada, settling in Lotbinière. Having chosen the

law for a profession, he devoted five years to legal studies, and in the

month of March, 1855, he was called to the Bar of Lower Canada. He first

entered political life in 1861, when he was returned to the Canadian

House of Assembly for the county of Lotbinière. This seat he continued

to hold until the Union of the Provinces, when at the general elections

which followed the formation of the Dominion he was elected by

acclamation to both the Commons of Canada and the Assembly of Quebec. He

sat in both Houses until 1874, when, on dual representation being

abolished, he resigned his seat in the Commons, and directed all his

energies to the furtherance of Liberal principles in the Quebec House of

Assembly. The same year he was offered a seat in the Senate, but

declined to accept that dignity, preferring to fight the battles of

Liberalism in the more popular Assembly, in which he had already

achieved a high reputation as a statesman and debater, as well as much

personal popularity. In January, 1877, he again declined elevation to

the Upper House, and refused the portfolio of Dominion Minister of

Agriculture which had been tendered him by the Mackenzie Administration.

The constituency of Lotbinière has never proved fickle to her trust, but

has regularly returned Mr. Joly as her representative to the popular

branch of the Legislature. From the Union, he has been the acknowledged

head of the Liberal Party in Lower Canada, and the chosen leader of the

Opposition in the House of Assembly. In March, 1878, the Hon. Luc

Letellier de St. Just, Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, dismissed his

Ministry under circumstances which have already been detailed at

length in these pages; and on the then Premier--Mr. De

Boucherville--refusing to nominate a successor, Mr. Joly was sent for

and invited to form a Cabinet. He promptly accepted the responsibility,

selected his colleagues, and, on being defeated in the Chamber, appealed

to the people for a ratification of the principles of his Party. The

contest was fought with great vigour and pertinacity on both sides, and

the result was a victory, though a slight one, for the Liberal Party.

Mr. Joly was opposed in Lotbinière by Mr. Guillaume E. Amyot, an

advocate and journalist of Quebec. He was elected by a majority of more

than three hundred votes. He became Premier and Minister of Public

Works--an office which requires the utmost tact and delicacy in its

administration. He set on foot a policy of retrenchment and purity, and

contemplated several much-needed reforms which he did not retain office

long enough to see brought into operation. Mr. Joly's Administration was

based on principles of the closest economy, and every effort was made to

check all unnecessary outlay of the public expenditure. The salaries of

the Ministers were reduced, an effort was made to abolish the

Legislative Council, and the railway policy of the country was developed

with caution. Wherever the pruning knife could be advantageously

employed, the Premier applied it, and if he was not always successful,

the fault was certainly not his own. His personal popularity was

sufficiently attested by the fact that although he is a Protestant, with

fixed opinions on theological matters, he was Premier of a Province

where a large majority of the population are adherents of the Roman

Catholic faith. He carried on the affairs of the country with combined

spirit and moderation until October, 1879, when, on being defeated in

the House, he and his Government resigned their seats in the Executive,

and Mr. Chapleau was sent for. Mr. Chapleau succeeded in forming an

Administration, which at the time of the present writing still holds the

reins of power in the Province of Quebec.

[Illustration: HENRI GUSTAVE JOLY, signed as H. G. JOLY]

Mr. Joly is a good departmental officer, a graceful speaker, a man of

much force of character, and one who has always the courage of his

convictions. Whether in power or in Opposition his language and

demeanour are marked by conciliation and courtesy. He is a man of many

friends, and has few personal enemies, even among those to whom he has

been a life-long political opponent. He has devoted a good deal of

attention to the study of forestry, and is the author of several

important and valuable treatises on that subject. Among other offices

which he holds may be mentioned the Presidency of the Society for the

rewooding of the Province of Quebec, the first Presidency of the Reform

Association, of the _Parti Nationale_ of Quebec, of the Lotbinière

Agricultural Society No. 2, and of the Society for the Promotion of

Canadian Industry. He is also Vice-President of the Humane Society of

British North America, and one of the Council of the Geographical

Society of Quebec, of which latter association he was once

Vice-President.

Some years ago Mr. Joly married Miss Gowan, a daughter of Mr. Hammond

Gowan, of Quebec.

THE HON. MACKENZIE BOWELL,

_MINISTER OF CUSTOMS._

Mr. Bowell is English by birth, but has resided in this country ever

since his tenth year. He was born at Rickinghall Superior, a pleasant

little village situated in the northern part of the county of Suffolk,

on the 27th of December, 1823. His father, the late Mr. John Bowell,

emigrated from Suffolk to Canada in the spring of 1833, and settled in

what is now the city of Belleville. His mother's maiden name was

Elizabeth Marshall. He has been compelled to make his own way in the

world, and has risen from obscure beginnings to the elevated position

which he now occupies by dint rather of natural ability than of any

adventitious aids. In his boyhood he enjoyed few educational advantages.

He had been only a few months in Canada when he entered a printing

office in Belleville, where he remained until he had completed his

apprenticeship. He then became foreman of the establishment. He began to

take an interest in politics at the very outset of his career, and

attached himself to the Conservative side. He was very industrious, and

during the term of his indentures did much to repair his defective

education. He availed himself of every opportunity which came in his way

for increasing his stock of knowledge, and erelong attained a position

and influence far more than commensurate with his years. In 1853 he

became sole proprietor of the Belleville _Intelligencer_, with which he

continued to be identified for a period of twenty-two years. Under his

management the _Intelligencer_ became one of the leading exponents of

public opinion in the county of Hastings, and his own local influence

was thereby greatly promoted. Other causes contributed to enhance his

position and influence. When only eighteen years old he allied himself

with the Orange Body, in which he rose to the highest dignities in the

gift of that Order. For eight years he was Grand Master of the

Provincial Grand Lodge of Ontario East. At the annual meeting of the

Grand Lodge of the Loyal Orange Institution of British North America,

held at Kingston in 1870, a change was made in the Grand Mastership,

which had been held for many years by the Hon. John Hillyard Cameron.

Mr. Bowell was unanimously elected to the office, and continued to

occupy it until 1878, when he declined reëlection. For thirteen years he

was Chairman of the Common School Board of Belleville, and was for some

time Chairman of the Grammar School, always taking a lively interest in

the promotion of education among the masses. For many years he was an

active promoter of the Volunteer Militia force, as well as an active

member. At the time of the St. Alban's raid he went with his company to

Amherstburgh, where, at considerable sacrifice to his business, he

remained four months. He was also at Prescott during the Fenian raid in

1866. At present he holds the rank of a Lieutenant-Colonel of

Volunteer Rifles. He was one of the founders of the Press Association,

and during one year occupied the position of President. He was also

Vice-President of the Dominion Editors' and Reporters' Association.

[Illustration: MACKENZIE BOWELL, signed as Mackenzie Bowell]

Mr. Bowell was an active politician long before he emerged from his

apprenticeship, but did not enter Parliament until after Confederation.

In 1863 he contested the North Riding of Hastings, but was unsuccessful,

and did not repeat the experiment until 1867, when he was returned to

the House of Commons for that Riding, and he has ever since represented

it. He signalized his entrance into Parliament by moving a series of

resolutions against Sir George Cartier's Militia Bill, and though he

failed to carry them all, he succeeded in defeating the Minister of

Militia on some important points by which a considerable reduction was

made in the expenditure. Several years later he took a prominent part in

the expulsion of Louis Riel from the House of Commons. It was by Mr.

Bowell that the investigation was instituted into Riel's complicity in

the murder of Thomas Scott before the walls of Fort Garry. In 1876 he

made a powerful attack upon Mr. Mackenzie's Government for having

awarded a contract to Mr. T. W. Anglin, the Speaker of the House. The

result of Mr. Bowell's attack was the unseating of several Members of

Parliament, including Mr. Anglin; and a stringent Act respecting the

Independence of Parliament was shortly afterwards passed.

At the last general election for the House of Commons, held on the 17th

of September, 1878, Mr. Bowell was opposed in North Hastings by Mr. E.

D. O'Flynn, of Madoc, whom he defeated by a majority of 241--the vote

standing 1,249 for Bowell and 1,008 for O'Flynn. After the resignation

of Mr. Mackenzie's Government in the following month, Mr. Bowell

accepted the portfolio of Minister of Customs in the Ministry of Sir

John A. Macdonald. This position he still retains. Upon returning to his

constituents after accepting office he was returned by acclamation. He

is not a frequent speaker, but he has always taken an active and

intelligent part in the business of the House, and is highly esteemed by

his colleagues.

Mr. Bowell married, in December, 1847, Miss Harriett Louisa Moore, of

Belleville. He is a Director in numerous railway and general commercial

enterprises. In 1875 he disposed of the _Intelligencer_, with which he

had been identified for so many years, but he still takes a warm

interest in its prosperity, and is indebted to it for a very firm and

consistent support.

THE REV. JAMES RICHARDSON, D.D.,

_LATE BISHOP OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN CANADA._

The late Bishop Richardson was born in the same year which witnessed the

death of the great founder of Methodism, John Wesley; the same year also

which witnessed the passing of the Constitutional Act whereby Upper

Canada was ushered into existence as a separate Province. He came of

English stock on both sides. His father, James Richardson, after whom he

was called, was a brave seaman; one of that old-world band of gallant

tars who fought under Lord Rodney against the French, when

"Rochambeau their armies commanded,

Their ships they were led by De Grasse."

He was present at the famous sea-fight off Dominica, in the West Indies,

on the 12th of April, 1782, when the naval forces of France and Spain

were almost entirely destroyed. He was soon afterwards taken prisoner,

and sent to France, where he was detained until the cessation of

hostilities. Having been set at liberty in 1785, he repaired to Quebec,

and was subsequently appointed to an office in connection with the

Canadian Marine. His duties lay chiefly on the upper lakes and rivers,

and he took up his abode at Kingston, on Lake Ontario. He married a lady

whose maiden name was Sarah Asmore, but who, at the time of her marriage

with him had been for some years a widow. The subject of this sketch was

one of the fruits of that union. He was born at Kingston, on the 29th of

January, 1791.

His parents were members of the Church of England, and he was brought up

in the faith as taught and professed by that Body. He attended various

schools in Kingston until he was about thirteen years of age, when he

began his career as a sailor on board a vessel commanded by his father.

During his five years' apprenticeship he acquired a thorough familiarity

with the topography and navigation of the lakes and rivers of Upper

Canada. In 1809, when he was eighteen years old, he entered the

Provincial Marine. Upon the breaking out of the war of 1812 he received

a Lieutenant's commission, and was forthwith employed in active service.

He became sailing master of the _Moira_, under Captain Sampson, and

afterwards of the _Montreal_, under Captain Popham. Upon the arrival of

Sir James Yeo in Upper Canada, in May, 1813, the naval armament on the

lakes entered upon a new phase of existence. The local marine ceased to

exist as such, and became a part of the Royal Navy. The Provincial

commissions previously granted were no longer of any effect, and that of

Lieutenant Richardson shared the same fate as the rest. The Provincial

officers resented this mode of dealing with their commissions, and all

but two of them retired from the marine and took service in the militia,

where, in the language of Colonel Coffin, they were permitted to

risk their lives without offence to their feelings. The two exceptions

were Lieutenant George Smith and the subject of this sketch. The latter

shared the sentiments of his brother officers, but he recognized the

importance to the country of working harmoniously with his superiors at

such a juncture, and cast every personal consideration aside. He

informed the Commodore that he was willing to give his country the

benefit of his local knowledge and services, but declined to take any

rank below that which had previously been conferred upon him. The

Commodore availed himself of the young man's services as a master and

pilot, and in those capacities he did good service until the close of

the war. He shared the gun-room with the regular commissioned officers,

with whom he was very popular. He was with the fleet during the

unsuccessful attempt on Sackett's Harbour, towards the close of May,

1813. A year later, at the taking of Oswego, he was pilot of the

_Montreal_, under Captain Popham, already mentioned; and he took his

vessel so close in to the fort that the Commodore feared lest he should

run aground. Soon after bringing the _Montreal_ to anchor a shot from

the fort carried off his left arm just below the shoulder. He sank down

upon the deck of the vessel, and was carried below. The remnant of his

shattered arm was secured so as to prevent him from bleeding to death,

"and there," says his biographer,[7] "he lay suffering while the battle

raged, his ears filled with its horrid din, and his mind oppressed with

anxiety as to its result, till the cheers of the victors informed him

that his gallant comrades had triumphed. He had been wounded in the

morning, and it was nearly evening before the surgeon could attend to

him, when it was found necessary to remove the shattered stump from the

socket at the shoulder joint. During the severe operation the young

lieutenant evinced the utmost fortitude. In the evening he was

exceedingly weak from loss of blood, the pain of his wound, and the

severity of the operation. Next day the fever was high, and for some

days his life apparently hung in the balance; but at length he commenced

to rally, and by the blessing of God upon the skilful attention and

great care that he received, he was finally fully restored." During the

following October he joined the _St. Lawrence_--said to have been the

largest sailing vessel that ever navigated the waters of Lake

Ontario--and in this service he remained until the close of the war.

[Illustration: JAMES RICHARDSON, signed as JAS. RICHARDSON]

Soon after the proclamation of peace he retired from the naval service,

and settled at Presque Isle Harbour, near the present site of the

village of Brighton, in the county of Northumberland. He was appointed

Collector of Customs of the port, and soon afterwards became a Justice

of the Peace. The Loyal and Patriotic Society requested his acceptance

of £100, and a yearly pension of a like amount was awarded to him by

Government in recognition of his services during the late war. This

well-earned pension he continued to receive during the remainder of his

life, embracing a period of more than fifty years.

In the year 1813, while the war was still in progress, he had married;

the lady of his choice being Miss Rebecca Dennis, daughter of Mr. John

Dennis, who was for many years a master-builder in the royal dock-yard

at Kingston. This lady shared his joys and sorrows for forty-five years.

During the last decade of her life she suffered great bodily affliction,

which she endured with Christian resignation and serenity. She died at

her home, Clover Hill, Toronto, on the 29th of March, 1858.

During the early months of their residence at Presque Isle Harbour, both

Mr. Richardson and his wife became impressed by serious thoughts on the

subject of religion. In August, 1818, they united with the Methodist

Episcopal Church. That Church was then in its infancy in this country,

and was struggling hard to obtain a permanent foothold. With its

subsequent history Mr. Richardson was closely identified. He was very

much in earnest, and felt it to be his duty to do his utmost for the

salvation of souls. His piety was not spasmodic or fitful, but steady

and enduring. His education at that time, though it was necessarily

imperfect, and far from being up to the standard of the present day, was

better than was that of most of his fellow-labourers. He at once became

a man of mark in the denomination, and was appointed to the offices of

steward and local preacher on the Smith's Creek circuit. His labours

were crowned with much success. His pulpit oratory is described as being

"full of vitality--adapted to bring souls to Christ, and build up in

holiness."[8] In 1824 he was called to active work, and placed on the

Yonge Street circuit, which included the town of York, and extended

through eight of the neighbouring townships. This rendered necessary his

removal from Presque Isle, and his resignation of his office as

Collector of Customs. His field of labour extended from York northwardly

to Lake Simcoe--a distance of forty-five miles--with lateral excursions

to right and left for indeterminate distances. The state of the roads

was such that wheeled vehicles were frequently unavailable, and the

greater part of the travelling had to be done on horseback, the preacher

carrying his books, clothing, writing materials, and other accessories

in his saddle-bags. His life was necessarily a toilsome one, and his

financial remuneration was little more than nominal. During his second

year on circuit he had for a colleague the Rev. Egerton Ryerson, with

whom he worked in the utmost harmony, and with very gratifying pastoral

results. Dr. Richardson has left on record his appreciation of his

colleague's services at this time. He says: "A more agreeable and useful

colleague I could not have desired. We laboured together with one heart

and mind, and God was graciously pleased to crown our united efforts

with success--we doubled the members in society, both in town and

country, and all was harmony and love. Political questions were not

rife--indeed were scarcely known among us. The church was an asylum for

any who feared God and wrought righteousness, irrespective of any party

whatever. We so planned our work as to be able to devote one week out of

four exclusively to pastoral labour in the town, and to preach there

twice every Sabbath, besides meeting all the former appointments in the

townships east and west bordering on Yonge Street for forty-five or

fifty miles northward to Roach's Point, Lake Simcoe. This prosperous and

agreeable state of things served to reconcile both my dear wife and

myself to the itinerant life, with all the attendant privations and

hardships incident to those times."

In 1826 Mr. Richardson was sent to labour at Fort George and Queenston.

Next year he was admitted into full connection, and ordained a deacon,

along with the late Dr. Anson Green and Egerton Ryerson. Mr. Richardson

was transferred to the River Credit, where he laboured for a year as a

missionary among the Indians. An important crisis in the history of the

Methodist Church in Canada was then at hand. The memorable Conference of

1828 was held at Ernesttown, in the Bay of Quinté district. It was

presided over by Bishop Hedding, and Mr. Richardson was chosen

secretary. It was at this Conference that the decisive step of

separation from the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church

in the United States was taken. Thenceforward the Church in Canada

became an independent Body, with a Bishop and Conference of its own.

"This step," says Mr. Richardson, "was fraught with results, for good or

ill, according as it is viewed by different parties, from their several

standpoints. It was deemed necessary then, by the majority, because of

the political relations of the two countries, and the difficulty

attendant on obtaining our legal right to hold church property, and

solemnize matrimony. Others, viewing the church as catholic, or

universal in her design and character, judged it wrong to limit her

jurisdiction by national or municipal boundaries." Mr. Richardson

subsequently regretted that the scheme of separation had been carried

out. Meanwhile he was appointed, along with the Rev. Joseph Gatchell, to

the Niagara Circuit, a very extensive field of labour, and took up his

abode at what was then the insignificant village of St. Catharines.

There he remained two years, and in 1830 was ordained as an elder by

Bishop Hedding, of the United States--no Bishop having as yet been

selected for the Canadian Church, which, since its separation, had been

presided over by a General Superintendent in the person of the Rev.

William Case. It is unnecessary that we should follow him in his labours

from circuit to circuit. His life was spent in the service of his

Church, and wherever he went he left behind him the impress of a sincere

and zealous man. At the Conference held at York in 1831 he was appointed

presiding elder of the Niagara District. In September, 1832, he became

editor of the _Christian Guardian_, and while holding that position he

opposed the reception of Government support to the churches with great

vigour and determination. He continued to direct the policy of the

_Guardian_ until the Conference of 1833. During this Conference, which

marks another important epoch in the history of Canadian Methodism, the

Articles of Union between the English and Canadian Connexions were

adopted. To this union Mr. Richardson was a consenting party, believing

that the step would be productive of good, though he subsequently had

reason to modify his views on the subject. In 1836 he severed his

connection with the Wesleyans, owing to the reception by that Body of

State grants. He soon afterwards removed to Auburn, in the State of New

York, where he won the respect of his congregation; but he was not

adapted to such a circle as that in which he found himself, and did not

feel himself at home there. "His quiet, unpretentious manners," says Mr.

Carroll, "were not of the kind to carry much sway with our impressible

American cousins; and the constant exhibition of an empty sleeve, ever

reminding them of an arm lost in resisting their immaculate Republic,

was likely to be an eye-sore to a people so hostile to Britain as the

citizens of the United States." He was moreover an uncompromising

abolitionist, and was fearless in his denunciations of the national

curse of slavery. The prevailing sentiment in the State of New York in

those days was not such as to conduce to the popularity of any man who

took the side of humanity. He remained at Auburn only a year, when he

returned to his native land, and took up his residence at Toronto.

Immediately upon his arrival he encountered his old friend and

fellow-labourer the Rev. Philander Smith. A long and serious

conversation followed, during which they both decided to reunite

themselves with the Methodist Episcopal Church. The Conference of that

Body was then in session a short distance from Toronto, and their

resolution was at once carried out. They were received with open arms,

and continued in the ministry of the Church during the remainder of

their respective lives.

In 1837 Mr. Richardson was stationed at Toronto. The following year he

travelled as a general missionary. The British and Foreign Bible

Society having established a branch in Canada, Mr. Richardson was, in

1840, appointed its agent, he having received permission of the

Conference to act in that capacity. This office he filled, with

advantage to the Society and credit to himself, for eleven years. While

acting in that capacity he often filled Wesleyan pulpits, preserved the

most cordial relations with his old friends belonging to that Body. In

1842 he became Vice-President, and in 1851 President, of the Upper

Canada Religious Tract and Book Society. He retained the latter position

to the time of his death. In 1852 he was again appointed Presiding Elder

of his Church. After occupying that position for two years his health

was so much impaired that he was granted a superannuation, which he held

for four years. On the 29th of March, 1858, he sustained a serious

bereavement in the loss of his wife. At the Conference held in that year

he reported himself able to resume his labours, and was once more

appointed to the charge of a district, but before the close of the

session he was elected to the Episcopal office. He was consecrated by

Bishop Smith, on Sunday, the 22nd of August. He forthwith entered upon

his duties. During the next two years he was in an infirm state of

health, but a brief respite from work restored him, and he resumed his

Episcopal and other duties with even more than his wonted vigour. In

1865 he visited England on behalf of Albert College, Belleville. The

College Board was hampered by a heavy debt, and it was found impossible

to relieve the pressure by Canadian subscriptions alone. Bishop

Richardson accordingly, at the request of the College authorities,

crossed the Atlantic to solicit aid there. He was accompanied by his

daughter, Mrs. Brett, wife of Mr. R. H. Brett, banker, of Toronto. They

were absent about six months, during which they visited many of the

principal cities and towns of England and Scotland. The Bishop was

indefatigable in his exertions, but the Reformed Methodist Church in

England is not a wealthy Body, and it had enough to do to support its

institutions at home. For these reasons the subscriptions obtained were

neither so large nor so numerous as had been hoped, though the

expedition was by no means a fruitless one.

The next five years were comparatively uneventful ones in the life of

Bishop Richardson. His time was spent in the discharge of his official

duties. His coadjutor, Bishop Smith, had become old and feeble, and

Bishop Richardson willingly took upon himself a portion of the invalid's

work. His time, therefore, was fully occupied. In 1870 Bishop Smith

died, and during the next four years the entire duties pertaining to the

Episcopal office devolved upon the survivor. He seemed almost to renew

his youth in order to meet the extra demands made upon him. He was more

than fourscore years of age, yet he contrived to get creditably through

an amount of mental and bodily labour which would have prostrated many

men not past their prime. He frequently conducted his pulpit services

and the sessions of the Conference without the aid of spectacles; and he

was persistent in his determination to do his own work without the

assistance of a secretary. This state of things, however, in a man of

his age, could not be expected to last. His vital forces began

perceptibly to give way. In the month of August, 1874, at the General

Conference of the Church held at Napanee, he consecrated the Rev. Dr.

Carman to the Episcopal office. The ceremonial taxed his energies very

severely, and he was compelled by physical suffering to leave the

Conference room as soon as he had placed his associate in the chair. At

the close of the Conference he returned to his home at Clover Hill--now

known as St. Joseph Street--where a few days' rest enabled him to regain

as great a measure of health as could be expected in a man who had

entered upon his eighty-fourth year. During the autumn and winter he was

actively at work as earnestly as ever, watching over every department of

the Church, and giving especial attention to the questions submitted by

the General Conference for the action of the Quarterly Meeting

Conferences. During the following winter, while visiting the Ancaster

Circuit, he was prostrated by dizziness, and after his return home it

was evident that his end was near. He sank quietly to his rest on the

9th of March, 1875. His death was like his life--manly, and devoid of

display. "I have no ecstasy," he remarked to a clerical visitor, "but I

know in whom I have believed." To another visitor he remarked, "My work

is done; I have nothing to do now but to die." He retained his mental

faculties in their full vigour almost up to the moment when he ceased to

breathe. He was buried in the family vault at the Necropolis, Toronto,

on the 12th of the month. The funeral was unusually large. The funeral

sermon was preached by Bishop Carman in the Metropolitan Methodist

Church, on the morning of Sunday, March 21st, from the text 1st

Corinthians, xv. 55: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy

victory?"

Bishop Richardson, while possessing few or none of the superlatively

salient characteristics by which some of his contemporaries were

distinguished, was one of those men who, almost imperceptibly, exert a

wide and lasting influence for good. There was nothing showy or flashy

about him; nothing theatrical or unreal. He made no pretence to

brilliant oratory, or indeed to specially brilliant gifts of any kind.

He was simply a man of good intellect and sound judgment, with a highly

developed moral nature, who strove earnestly to benefit his fellow-men,

and to leave the world better than he found it. He believed in

Episcopacy, and was in full sympathy with the form of government adopted

by his Church; but his zeal for Episcopacy was altogether subordinated

to his zeal for Christianity. His life was conscientiously devoted to

the service of his Master, and he has left behind him many hallowed

memories. Next to his piety, perhaps the most conspicuous thing about

him was his love for his country. His patriotism was as zealous in his

declining years as it had been in those remote times when he lost his

left arm before the batteries of Oswego. At the time of the Fenian

invasion of Canada, in 1866--when he was in his seventy-sixth year--his

loyal sympathies were roused to such a degree that he expressed his

willingness to risk his one remaining arm in his country's defence. He

would have taken the field, had his doing so been necessary, with as

clear a conscience as he would have discharged any other duty of his

life. In the words of his biographer: "Loyalty to God and his country,

uprightness and integrity in his dealings with his fellow-men, and civil

and religious liberty for all, were leading articles in his creed."

LORD SEATON.

Lord Seaton, who is better known to Canadians by his commoner's title of

Sir John Colborne, was a son of Samuel Colborne, an English gentleman

resident at Lyndhurst, in the county of Hants. He was born sometime in

the year 1777, and after passing from the hands of a private tutor to

Winchester College--where he remained several years--he embraced a

military life, in 1794, by entering the army in the capacity of an

ensign. The closing years of the last century were propitious for a

young British soldier fired by an ambition to distinguish himself, and

young Colborne had embraced precisely the career for which he was best

fitted. He was a born soldier, and throughout his military life

furnished an apt illustration of the round peg in the round hole.

Napier, the historian of the Peninsular War, speaks of him as having

developed "an extraordinary genius for war," and another historian

refers to him as one of the bravest and most efficient officers produced

by those stirring times. For the readers of these pages the chief

interest in his career begins with his arrival in Canada in 1828. His

services previous to that date may be summarized in a few sentences. In

1799 he was sent over by way of Holland to Egypt under Sir Ralph

Abercromby, and remained there until the realm of the Pharaohs was

cleared of the French and restored to the Sultan's dominion. He was with

the British and Russian troops employed on the Neapolitan frontier in

1805; also in Sicily and Calabria, in the campaign of 1806. Having

obtained promotion for his gallant services, he became Military

Secretary to General Fox, Commander of the Forces in Sicily and the

Mediterranean, and afterwards acted in the same capacity to Sir John

Moore. He was present at the battle of Corunna, where his brave Chief

met a glorious death. Immediately afterwards he joined the army of Lord

Wellington, and in 1809 he was sent to La Mancha to report on the

operations of the Spanish armies. Having received the command of a

regiment, and having been appointed to a lieutenant-colonelcy, he

commanded a brigade in Sir Rowland Hill's division in the campaigns of

1810-11, and was detached in command of the brigade to Castel Branco, to

observe the movements of General Reynier's _corps d'armée_ on the

frontier of Portugal. At the battle of Busaco he commanded a brigade and

also on the retreat to the Lines of Torres Vedras. On the 21st of June,

1814, he married Miss Elizabeth Yonge, daughter of the Rev. J. Yonge, of

Puslinch, Devonshire, and Rector of Newton-Ferrers. He was actively

employed all through the War in the Peninsula, and received his due

proportion of wounds and glory. In 1815 he was present at the memorable

battle of Waterloo, in command of his old regiment, the 52nd. He

likewise commanded a brigade on the celebrated march to Paris. The

battle of Waterloo was the last European conflict in which he took part.

He subsequently became Lieutenant-Governor of Guernsey, one of the

Channel Islands. In 1825 he was appointed a Major-General; and in 1828

he first came to Canada as Lieutenant-Governor, when the chief interest

in his life, so far as Canadian readers are concerned, may be said to

have begun. He succeeded Sir Peregrine Maitland, who had been

transferred to Nova Scotia.

He arrived in Canada in November, 1828, and at once assumed charge of

the Administration. His predecessor had left him a very undesirable

legacy in the shape of great popular discontent. It was announced that

Sir John had come over with instructions to reverse Sir Peregrine

Maitland's policy, and to govern in accordance with liberal principles.

The general elections of that year testified plainly enough that the

people of Upper Canada were moving steadily in the direction of Reform,

and if Sir John had acted in accordance with the instructions he had

received from headquarters a good deal of subsequent calamity might

perhaps have been averted. But the new Governor was essentially a

military Governor. He had been literally "a man of war from his youth."

His character, though in the main upright and honourable, was stern and

unbending, and his military pursuits had not fitted him for the task of

governing a people who were just beginning to grasp the principles of

constitutional liberty. He allied himself with the Family Compact, and

was guided by the advice of that body in his administration of public

affairs. Parliament met early in January, 1829, and it soon became

apparent that Sir John Colborne's idea of a liberal policy was not

sufficiently advanced to meet the demands of the Assembly. There is no

need to recapitulate in detail the arbitrary proceedings to which the

Governor lent his countenance during the next few years. The prosecution

of Collins and of William Lyon Mackenzie, and the setting apart of the

fifty-seven rectories, have often been commented upon, and but little

satisfaction is to be derived from repeating those oft-told grievances.

Upon the whole, Sir John Colborne's Administration of Upper Canadian

affairs cannot be said to have been much more beneficent than was that

of his predecessor. With good intentions, he was constitutionally

unequal to the requirements of the position in which he found himself

placed. His course of action was very distasteful to the Reform Party,

but he continued to govern the Upper Province until 1835, when he

solicited his recall. His request was acceded to. His successor, Sir

Francis Bond Head, arrived in January, 1836, and Sir John was just about

to sail from New York for Europe, when he received a despatch appointing

him Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in Canada. He consequently

returned, and took up his quarters at Quebec, the capital of the Lower

Province, where he adopted such prompt measures for the defence of the

country as the exigencies of the times demanded. On the breaking out of

the Rebellion he was once more in his proper element, and showed that

the high military reputation which he had achieved on the continent of

Europe had not been undeserved. There is no need to go through the

minutiae of the Lower Canadian Rebellion, nor to tell in detail the

story of St. Denis, of St. Eustache, and of St. Benoit. Sir John has

been accused of unnecessary cruelty in putting down the insurrection.

Suffice it to say that the emergencies of the occasion were such as to

call for determined measures, and that Sir John employed measures suited

to the emergencies. He soon succeeded in extinguishing the flame of

rebellion in all parts of the country, taking the field himself in

person in several engagements. Papineau was compelled to retreat, as

also was Wolfred Nelson and his colleagues; and when Robert, the

latter's brother, presented himself, he was totally routed by the able

regular and militia forces under Sir John Colborne's command. On the

recall of Lord Gosford, Sir John was temporarily appointed

Governor-General of British North America, which high office he vacated

on Lord Durham's arrival in May, 1838. He was appointed to it again on

that nobleman's sudden and unauthorized departure in November of the

same year. He continued to administer the Government until 1839, when he

earnestly solicited his recall, in order that he might be enabled to

repose from his great labours. The Hon. Charles Poulett Thomson was

appointed his successor, and arrived at Quebec to relieve him of the

cares and anxieties of Government. On the 23rd of October Sir John

sailed for England. On his arrival there new honours awaited him. He was

created a peer of the United Kingdom, as Baron Seaton; received the

Grand Cross of the Bath, of Hanover, of St. Michael, and of St. George.

He was also created a Privy Councillor, and a pension of £2,000 per

annum was conferred upon him and his two immediate successors by Act of

Parliament. In 1838 he was appointed Lieutenant-General, and in 1854

General, as also Colonel of the Second Life Guards. In 1860 he was

raised to the highest rank and honour in the British service--that of

Field-Marshal. He died on the 17th of April, 1863, leaving behind him a

numerous progeny, the eldest whereof, James Colborne, succeeded to, and

now holds, the family titles and estates. The latter are of considerable

extent, and are situated in Devonshire, in London, and in the county of

Kildare, Ireland. It is worth while mentioning that the present

incumbent served his father in the capacity of an aide-de-camp during

the Canadian Rebellion.

The name of Sir John Colborne is inseparably blended with that of Upper

Canada College in the minds of the people of this Province. During the

early days of his Administration of affairs in Upper Canada there was a

good deal of agitation in the public mind with respect to the

establishment of a more advanced seat of learning than had previously

existed here. It had long been considered advisable to afford facilities

to the youth of Upper Canada for obtaining a more thorough education

than was to be had at such institutions as the Home District Grammar

School, which up to the year 1829 was the most advanced educational

establishment in York. Public feeling was aroused, and several petitions

were presented to the Legislature on the subject, each of which gave

rise to prolonged controversy and debate. The outcome of the discussion

was that Upper Canada College was established by an order of the

Provincial Government. Its original name was "the Upper Canada College

and Royal Grammar School," and the system upon which it was modelled was

that which was then adopted in most of the great public schools of

England. The classes were first opened on the 8th of January, 1830, in

the building on Adelaide Street which had formerly been used as the Home

District Grammar School. There it continued for more than a year. In the

summer of 1831 the institution was removed to the site which it has

since occupied. A fine portrait in oil of the subject of this sketch, in

his military costume, may be seen in one of the apartments there.

THE HON. SIR DOMINICK DALY.

Sir Dominick Daly was born on the 11th of August, 1799, and was the

third son of Mr. Dominick Daly, a descendant of an old Roman Catholic

family in the county of Galway, Ireland. He was educated at the Roman

Catholic College of St. Mary's, near Birmingham, and after completing

his studies spent some time with an uncle who was a banker in Paris. He

subsequently returned to Ireland. In 1825 the Earl of Dalhousie visited

England, and Sir Francis M. Burton, who acted as Lieutenant-Governor

during his absence, brought with him as his private secretary, Mr.

Dominick Daly, then about twenty-six years of age. Lord Dalhousie

returned to Canada early in 1826, and Mr. Daly returned with Sir Francis

Burton to England.

In 1827 he returned to Quebec, bearing with him instructions to the

Governor-General to confer upon him the office of Provincial Secretary.

The appointment had been procured in England by the influence of Sir

Francis Burton, and other friends of Mr. Daly. During the interval which

elapsed between his appointment as Provincial Secretary and the

rebellion of 1837, a period of about ten years, Mr. Daly carefully

abstained from engaging in the political conflict, and seems to have

enjoyed a larger share of public confidence than any other official.

When Lord Durham was appointed Governor-General after the rebellion, Mr.

Daly was the only public official who was sworn of the Executive

Council, and there is no doubt that he was the only one of the British

officials who was looked on with favour by the leaders of the popular

party. And yet, viewing his conduct by the light of subsequent events,

it is probable that the popular leaders overestimated Mr. Daly's

sympathy with their cause. Unconnected with politics, he considered it

his duty to support the policy of the Governor of the day; and he

doubtless was of opinion that having been for many years incumbent of an

office which had always been admitted to be held as a permanent tenure,

he was justified in retaining it as long as he had the sanction of the

Governor for doing so. When the Union of the old Provinces of Lower and

Upper Canada took place in 1841, the Governor-General called on the

principal departmental officers to find seats in the House of Assembly,

although it is very improbable that he had any intention of strictly

carrying into practice what has since been understood as Responsible

Government. It had been the practice under the old system for the law

officers of the Crown to find seats in the Legislature, but the offices

of Provincial Secretary and Registrar, Receiver-General, Commissioner of

Crown Lands, and Inspector-General, had always been considered

non-political. Lord Sydenham, as far as can be judged from what

occurred, had no definite policy on the subject. He induced Mr. Daly to

enter Parliament, and the latter seems to have had no difficulty in

procuring a seat for the county of Megantic. The Provincial Secretary in

Upper Canada was allowed to retain his office without entering public

life. The Commissioner of Crown Lands in Lower Canada declined becoming

a candidate, and retained his office, while in Upper Canada the

Commissioner of Crown Lands was a member both of the Legislative and

Executive Councils. Mr. Daly seems to have been considered as

unobjectionable by the leaders of the majority in Lower Canada, as he

was by their opponents, which, taking into account the excited state of

feeling at the period of the Union, is conclusive proof that he had

acted with great discretion during the stormy period which preceded the

suspension of the Constitution. When Mr. Baldwin, on accepting office at

the time of the Union, deemed it his duty to acquaint those who were

appointed members of Council prior to the meeting of the first

Parliament of United Canada, that there were some in whom he had no

political confidence, Mr. Daly was one of the exceptions; and as Mr.

Baldwin's avowed object was the introduction of French Canadians into

the Government, he must have been satisfied that they had not the

objection to Mr. Daly that they had to Mr. Ogden and Mr. Day. Mr.

Baldwin's attempt to procure a reconstruction of the Ministry was

unsuccessful, and he resigned, not having been supported by those with

whom he had avowed his readiness to act. Mr. Daly went through the

session of 1841 as a member of the Government, and visited England

during the recess. On the meeting of the Legislature in 1842, Sir

Charles Bagot having, during the interval, succeeded Lord Sydenham,

overtures were made, with the concurrence of Mr. Daly, to Messrs.

Lafontaine and Baldwin, which led to a reconstruction of the Cabinet.

Mr. Daly retained his office of Provincial Secretary, and acted in

perfect harmony with his colleagues, not only during the short term of

Sir Charles Bagot's Government, but during the critical period of 1843,

after Sir Charles Metcalfe's assumption of the Government, and up to the

very moment when, in the opinion of all his colleagues, resignation

became absolutely necessary. During the whole of this period Mr. Daly

appeared to concur with his colleagues on every point on which a

difference of opinion arose, and it was only when resignation became

absolutely necessary that he declined to act any longer in concert with

them. At an early period of the session of 1843 a vacancy occurred in

the Speakership of the Legislative Council--an office of considerable

political importance, and one which it was clearly impossible that the

Ministry could consent to have conferred on a political opponent. The

choice of the Administration fell on the Hon. Denis B. Viger, one of the

oldest Liberal politicians in the Province. On submitting their advice

to Sir Charles Metcalfe, he not only objected most strongly to Mr.

Viger's appointment, but stated that he had offered the post, without

consulting his Ministers, to Mr. Sherwood, a retired Judge, and father

of Mr. Henry Sherwood, one of the leading opponents of the

Administration. Had Mr. Sherwood accepted the offer, the crisis would

have occurred a few weeks sooner than it did, and on a question on which

there could have been no misapprehension. Mr. Sherwood declined the

offer, probably to avoid the impending difficulty, and after some

negotiation, the Ministry consented to withdraw Mr. Viger's name, and to

substitute that of the late Lieutenant-Governor Caron. During all this

difficulty, Mr. Daly was apparently in accord with his colleagues,

although it subsequently appeared that he was acting in concert with Mr.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who took an active part in supporting Sir

Charles, and whose letters published in England threw a good deal of

light on the transactions previous to the crisis. Mr. Daly retained his

office of Secretary in the new Ministry formed by Metcalfe, and was

subjected to much censure for what was considered a desertion of his

colleagues. So bitter was the personal feeling that on one occasion

language was used in the House by one of his old colleagues, Mr. Aylwin,

which he deemed so offensive as to lead him to retort in terms that

provoked a hostile message and a subsequent meeting, when, after an

exchange of shots, the dispute was amicably settled.

The Ministry formed under Metcalfe in 1843 was changed repeatedly, Mr.

Daly having been the only member of it who retained office until the

resignation in March, 1848, in consequence of a vote of want of

confidence having been carried in the Assembly at the opening of the

third Parliament. There were during that period two Attorneys-General

and two Solicitors-General in each of the Provinces, two Presidents of

the Council, two Receivers-General, two Ministers of Finance, two

Commissioners of Crown Lands, but only one Secretary, whose adhesion to

office was the subject of a good deal of remark. When at last

resignation became indispensably necessary, Mr. Daly withdrew almost

immediately from public life. It had clearly never been his intention to

continue in Parliament as a member of the Opposition; and it could

scarcely have been expected by the Party with which circumstances had

forced him into alliance that he would adhere to it after its downfall.

It may truly be said of Mr. Daly that he was never a member of any

Canadian Party, and that he had no sympathy with the political views of

any of his numerous colleagues. A most amiable man in private life, and

much esteemed by a large circle of private friends, he was wholly

unsuited for public life. He had never been in the habit of speaking in

public prior to his first election, and he never attempted to acquire

the talent. Having no private fortune, he found himself after the age of

forty suddenly called upon to take a prominent part in the organization

of a new system of government, which involved his probable retirement,

and as an almost necessary consequence, his subsequent exclusion from

office.

In estimating Sir Dominick Daly's political character, it would be

unfair to judge him by the same standard as those who subsequently

accepted office with a full knowledge of the responsibilities which they

incurred by doing so. Sir Dominick Daly was the last of the old Canadian

bureaucracy, and it is not a little singular that he should have been

able to retain his old office of Secretary under the new system for a

period of fully seven years. On his return to England his claim on the

Imperial Government, which without doubt had been strongly urged by

Metcalfe, was promptly recognized, and he was almost immediately

appointed a Commissioner of Enquiry into the claims of the New and

Waltham Forests, which he held until the close of the Commission in

1850-51. He was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Island of Tobago,

in the Windward Island group, in 1851, and transferred to the government

of Prince Edward Island in 1854, which he held until 1857. In November,

1861, he was appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief of South

Australia, where he died in the year 1868, in the sixty-ninth year of

his age. He had received the honour of knighthood on the termination of

his service in Prince Edward Island.

Sir Dominick Daly married, in 1826, a daughter of Colonel Gore, of

Barrowmount, in the County Kilkenny, Ireland, by whom he had several

children. One of his sons is the present representative of the city of

Halifax in the Dominion Parliament.

THE HON. WILLIAM McMASTER.

Mr. McMaster is probably the most widely known among the merchant

princes of Western Canada, and has had a remarkably successful

commercial career. As is the case with most men who have been the

architects of their own fortunes, his success is largely attributable to

his personal qualifications. He inherited a sound constitution, an

active, enterprising mind, and a strong will. With such advantages he

began the battle of life in this country nearly half a century ago. He

grew with the country's growth, and by his industry and shrewdness

achieved, in course of time, a position which made him thoroughly

independent of the world. It has been the fashion to say of him that his

mercantile operations were always attended with "good luck;" but those

who converse with him on commercial or financial questions for half an

hour will draw their own conclusions as to how far "luck" has had to do

with the matter. He has been lucky in the same sense that the late Duke

of Wellington was lucky; that is to say, he has known how to take

advantage of favourable circumstances. Anyone else possessing his

keenness of perception and shrewd common sense would in the long run

have been equally lucky. He has made good use alike of his wealth and

his talents, and the land of his adoption is the better for his

presence.

He is by birth and early training an Irishman, and was born in the

county of Tyrone, on the 24th of December, 1811. His father, the late

Mr. William McMaster, was a linen merchant whose resources were not

abundant, but who was able to give his son a good education. The latter

received his educational training at an excellent private school taught

by a Mr. Halcro, who had a high local reputation as a teacher. After

leaving school he was for a short time a clerk in a local mercantile

house. His prospects in Ireland, however, were not commensurate with his

ambition. In 1833, when he was in his twenty-second year, he resigned

his situation, and emigrated. Upon reaching New York he was advised by

the resident British Consul not to settle in the United States, but to

make his way to Canada. He acted upon the advice, and passed on to

Toronto--or, as it was then called, Little York.

The conditions of the wholesale trade in Canada in those days were very

different from those which now prevail. The preeminence of Montreal as a

point of distribution for both the Provinces was well established, and

the wholesale trade of Little York was comparatively insignificant.

There were very few exclusively wholesale establishments in the Upper

Canadian capital, but several of the largest firms contrived to combine

a wholesale and retail business. Young William McMaster, immediately

upon his arrival at Little York, obtained a clerkship in one of these,

viz., that of Mr. Robert Cathcart, a merchant who then occupied premises

on the south side of King Street, opposite Toronto Street. After

remaining in this establishment somewhat more than a year in the

capacity of a clerk, young McMaster was admitted to a partnership in the

business, a large share of which from that time forward came under his

own personal management. The partnership lasted about ten years,

when--in 1844--Mr. McMaster withdrew from it, and started a separate

wholesale dry-goods business on his own account, in a store situated on

the west side of Yonge Street, a short distance below the intersection

of that thoroughfare with King Street. By this time the conditions of

trade had undergone some modification. Montreal still had the lion's

share of the wholesale trade, but Toronto and Hamilton had also become

known as distributing centres, and both those towns contained some large

wholesale warehouses. Mr. McMaster's business was a large one from the

beginning, but it rapidly expanded, until there was not a town, and

scarcely a village in Canada West, which did not largely depend upon the

house of William McMaster for its dry-goods supplies. The attempt to

make Toronto, instead of Montreal, the wholesale emporium for Western

Canada was not initiated by Mr. McMaster, but it was ably seconded by

him, and no merchant now living did so much to divert the wholesale

trade to western channels. In process of time he admitted his nephews

(who now compose the firm of Messrs. A. R. McMaster & Brother) into

partnership, and removed to more commodious premises lower down on Yonge

Street, contiguous to the Bank of Montreal. This large establishment in

its turn became too small for the ever-increasing volume of trade, and

the magnificent commercial palace on Front Street, where the business is

still carried on, was erected. Here, under the style of William McMaster

& Nephews, the business continued to grow. As time passed by, the senior

partner became engaged in large financial and other enterprises, and

practically left the purely commercial operations to the management of

his nephews. Eventually he withdrew from the firm altogether, but his

retirement has not been passed in idleness. He has a natural aptitude

for dealing with matters of finance, and this aptitude has been

increased by the operations of an active mercantile life. He has been a

director in several of the most important banking and insurance

institutions in the country, and has always taken his full share of the

work devolving upon him. Twenty years ago he founded the Canadian Bank

of Commerce, and became its President. That position he has occupied

ever since, and every banking-day finds him at his post. There can be no

doubt that his care and judgement have had much to do with the highly

successful career of the institution. Mr. McMaster was also for some

time a director of the Ontario Bank, and of the Bank of Montreal. He has

for many years acted as President of the Freehold Loan and Savings

Company, as Vice-President of the Confederation Life Association, and as

a director of the Isolated Risk--now called the Sovereign--Insurance

Company. He also for many years occupied the unenviable position of

Chairman of the Canadian Board of the Great Western Railway. Upon the

abolition of that Board a few years ago, and the election of an English

Board in its stead, Mr. McMaster was the only Canadian whose services

were retained.

But it is not only with financial and kindred matters that Mr. McMaster

has busied himself of late years. In 1862 he for the first time entered

political life, having been elected to represent the Midland Division,

embracing North York and South Simcoe, in the Legislative Council of old

Canada. He was opposed by Mr. John W. Gamble, who sustained a crushing

defeat, and Mr. McMaster continued to represent the Midland Division

until the Union. When the Senate of the Dominion was substituted for the

old Legislative Council, after the accomplishment of Confederation, Mr.

McMaster was chosen as one of the Senators to represent Ontario, and he

has ever since taken part in the deliberations of that body. He has

always been identified with the Liberal Party, but has never been an

extremist in his politics, and has kept himself aloof from the faction

fights of the times.

His highest claim to the consideration of posterity will probably rest

upon his services in the cause of education. These have been of a kind

which we would be glad to see emulated by others of our wealthy

capitalists. His first connection with general educational matters dates

from the year 1865, when he was appointed a member of the old Council of

Public Instruction. He continued to represent the Baptist Church--of

which he is a prominent member--at that Board for a period of ten years.

When the Senate of Toronto University was reconstructed, in 1873, he was

nominated one of its members by the Lieutenant-Governor. But his most

important services in the cause of education have been in connection

with the denomination of which he is a devoted member. When the Canadian

Literary Institute, at Woodstock, was originally projected, he

contributed liberally to the building fund, and repeated his

contribution when money was needed for the restoration of the buildings

after they were burned down. He has ever since contributed liberally to

the support of the institution, and indeed has been its mainstay in a

financial point of view. He has been largely instrumental in bringing

about the removal of the theological department of the Institute to

Toronto, where a suitable building is now in process of erection for its

accommodation in the Queen's Park, on land purchased by Mr. McMaster

specially for that purpose. The cost of erecting this building is borne

entirely by Mr. McMaster, and will amount, it is said, to at least

$70,000.

His benefactions to the Baptist Church have been large and numerous, and

of late years have been almost princely. The handsome edifice on the

corner of Jarvis and Gerrard Streets, Toronto, is largely due to the

bounty of Mr. McMaster and his wife, whose joint contributions to the

building fund amounted to about $60,000. To Mr. McMaster also is due the

existence of the Superannuated Ministers' Society of the Baptist Church

of this Province, of which he is the President, and to the funds of

which he has contributed with his accustomed liberality. He has also

long contributed to the support of the Upper Canada Bible Society, of

which he is the Treasurer.

He married, in 1851, Miss Mary Henderson, of New York City. Her death

took place in 1868; and three years afterwards he married his present

wife, Susan Molton, widow of the late Mr. James Fraser, of Newburgh, in

the State of New York. There is no issue of either marriage.

THE HON. WILFRID LAURIER.

Mr. Laurier was born at St. Lin, L'Assomption, in the Province of

Quebec, on the 20th of November, 1841. He was educated first at

L'Assomption College, and subsequently at McGill University, where he

took his degree of B.C.L. in 1864. A year later he was called to the Bar

of Quebec, his law studies having been pursued in the office of Mr.--now

the Hon.--T. A. R. Laflamme. His health having suffered by too close

attention to his professional duties, Mr. Laurier, at the end of two

years, left Montreal, where he had practised, and became the editor of

_Le Défricheur_ newspaper at Arthabaska. His predecessor in the

editorship was the late Mr. J. B. E. Dorion, the paper being devoted to

the advocacy of Liberal principles. It did not, however, long continue

in existence, and on its suspension Mr. Laurier once more returned to

his professional pursuits, in which he soon obtained a high position,

his personal popularity being as marked as his intellectual attainments.

In 1871 he was the Liberal candidate for the representation of Drummond

and Arthabaska in the Local Assembly, and carried the seat by a large

majority. His talents as a debater and his statesmanlike cast of mind

soon made him prominent in the Legislature, and when, in 1874, Mr.

Mackenzie, shortly after accepting office, appealed to the country, Mr.

Laurier relinquished his seat at Quebec to enter upon a more enlarged

sphere of work at Ottawa. He was elected for Drummond and Arthabaska

after a keen contest, and on the opening of the first session of the new

Parliament was selected to second the address in reply to the Speech

from the Throne. The manner in which he discharged this duty made a most

favourable impression. He was at once recognized as one of the foremost

of the many able representatives Quebec had sent to support the

then-existing Government, and has since never failed to impress the

House favourably when he has taken part in the debates.

It was evident from his first introduction to parliamentary life that he

must, at no distant day, be called upon to take his share in the

responsibilities of office. Even before that time his status as a leader

of opinion and a representative man in relation to public affairs had

been very clearly marked out. In a lecture delivered by him at Quebec in

July, 1877, on "Political Liberalism," he made a splendid defence of the

Liberals of Quebec against the misrepresentations and aspersions to

which they had been subjected. He insisted on the distinction between

religious and political opinions being maintained, and showed how

strictly moderate and constitutional were the views of those with whom

he was politically associated. Of the Liberal Party of the past--of the

follies that had characterized too many of its actions and utterances,

nothing, he declared, then existed, but in its stead remained the

principles of the Liberal Party of England. On the other hand, sketching

the party opposed to him under the name of Conservative, he spoke as

follows:--"Sir George Cartier," he said, "was devoted to the principles

of the English Constitution--if Sir George Cartier were to return to the

world again he would not recognize his Party. I certainly respect too

much the opinion of my opponents to do them an injury, but I reproach

them with knowing neither their country nor the times. I accuse them of

estimating the political situation not by what has occurred here, but by

what has occurred in France. I accuse them of endeavouring to introduce

here ideas which would be impossible in our state of society. I accuse

them of laboriously endeavouring, and, unfortunately, too effectually,

to make religion the simple basis of a political Party. It is the custom

of our adversaries to accuse us Liberals of irreligion. I am not here to

parade my religious principles, but I proclaim that I have too much

respect for the faith in which I was born ever to make it appear as the

basis of a political organization. We are a happy and free people; we

owe this freedom to the Liberal institutions which govern us, which we

owe to our forefathers and to the wisdom of the Mother Country. The

policy of the Liberal Party is to guard these institutions, to defend

and propagate them, and under the rule of these institutions to develop

the latent resources of our country. Such is the policy of the Liberal

Party, and it has no other." Mr. Laurier's Liberalism, in fact, is of

the strictly British type, and to the immense benefit which has accrued

to his French compatriots by the concession of free British institutions

he has borne eloquent testimony. Few men, indeed, could be found better

calculated than Mr. Laurier to effect a union of thought, sentiment, and

interest between those distinguished by difference of race and creed, in

the interest of their common country. It was not, as we have seen, at

all surprising that on a vacancy occurring in the Quebec representation

in the Dominion Cabinet, Mr. Laurier should be offered the vacant

portfolio. His fitness for the position was disputed by none, either on

personal or political grounds. In Ontario, no less than in Quebec, his

acceptance of office was hailed as a just tribute to his worth and

ability. In September, 1877, he was sworn of the Privy Council, and

became Minister of Inland Revenue. The knowledge of his strength in

Parliament and the country served to stimulate the determination of his

opponents to defeat him at all hazards when he returned to his

constituents for reëlection. The contest terminated by Mr. Bourbeau, the

Conservative candidate, being elected by a majority of 22 votes over the

new Minister. The defeat only served to show how highly the importance

of Mr. Laurier's position in the country was estimated. Several

constituencies were at once placed at his disposal. Ultimately the Hon.

Mr. Thibaudeau, member for Quebec East, resigned, in order to create a

vacancy. After a short but very exciting contest, Mr. Laurier carried

the division by a majority of 315 votes. The result was the signal for

general rejoicing, his journey to Ottawa and his reception there being

one continued ovation. He retained the portfolio of Minister of Inland

Revenue until the resignation of the Government in October, 1878. At the

elections held on the 17th of September previous he was returned for

Quebec East by a majority of 778 votes over his opponent, Mr. Vallière,

and he now sits in the House for that constituency. He speaks both the

French and English languages fluently, has a large amount of French

vivacity sobered by great self-command, can strike home without too

severely wounding, and commands the respect and good-will of his warmest

political adversaries.

THE RIGHT HON. SIR CHARLES BAGOT.

The Right Honourable Sir Charles Bagot, the successor of Lord Sydenham

as Governor-General of British North America, was born at Blithfield

House, Rugeley, in Staffordshire, England, on the 23rd of September,

1781. He was descended from an old aristocratic family, which has been

resident in Staffordshire for several hundred years, and was ennobled in

1780--the year previous to the birth of the subject of this sketch. He

was the second son of William, first Baron Bagot, a nobleman highly

distinguished for his scholastic and scientific attainments. His mother

was Lady Louisa, daughter of Viscount St. John, brother and heir of the

illustrious Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke.

His life was not marked by much variety of incident, and affords but

scanty material for the biographer. From his early youth he was a prey

to great feebleness of constitution, which prevented him from making any

conspicuous figure at school. Upon completing his majority, his health

being much improved, he entered public life on the Tory side, in the

capacity of Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, under Mr.

Canning, during the Administration of the Duke of Portland. His tenure

of that office does not seem to have been marked by any very noteworthy

incidents. In 1814 he was despatched on a special mission to Paris, at

which time he resided for several months in the French capital. Later on

he was successively appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the United

States, and Ambassador to the Courts of St. Petersburg and the Hague. By

this time his health, which had never been very robust, again gave way,

and he was compelled to decline several other honourable and lucrative

appointments which were offered to him by the Ministry of the day. One

of them was the Governor-Generalship of India, rendered vacant by the

return of Lord Amherst to England. During Sir Robert Peel's short

Administration in 1834, he took charge of a special mission to Vienna,

in the discharge of which he commended himself highly to the authorities

at home. A Reform Government succeeded, and during its tenure of office

we have no information as to the subject of this memoir.

In 1841 the Tories again came into power under the leadership of Sir

Robert Peel. In the Ministry then formed, Lord Stanley, afterwards Earl

of Derby (father of the present Earl), held the post of Colonial

Secretary. Upon Lord Sydenham's death, in that year, it became necessary

to appoint a new Governor-General of British North America. Lord Stanley

offered the post to Sir Charles Bagot, who accepted it, and soon

afterwards sailed for this country, where public affairs, since Lord

Sydenham's death in the preceding month of September, had been under the

direction of Sir Richard Jackson, Commander-in-Chief of the Forces. Sir

Charles entered upon his official duties on the 10th of January, 1842,

and it soon became apparent that he intended to carry out the judicious

line of policy inaugurated by his predecessor, Lord Sydenham. He held

himself aloof from purely party questions, and formed no definite

alliance with either Reformers or Conservatives. This was a grievous

disappointment to the latter. His past political career had led the Tory

leaders in Canada to suppose that he would espouse their views, and that

by his aid their ascendancy would be reëstablished. These expectations

were not destined to be realized. Sir Charles spent his time in

familiarizing himself with the position and needs of the country at

large. In some respects he showed himself to be more liberal than his

predecessor, Lord Sydenham, had been. Lord Sydenham had been indisposed

to have anything to do with those persons who had abetted the rebellion.

Sir Charles, knowing that Responsible Government had been conceded,

resolved to govern himself accordingly. Though himself a Tory by

predilection and by training, he knew that he had not been sent out to

Canada to gratify his own political leanings, but to govern in

accordance with the popular will. "He determined," says Mr. Macmullen,

"to use whatever party he found capable of supporting a Ministry, and

accordingly made overtures to the French Canadians and that section of

the Reform Party of Upper Canada led by Mr. Baldwin, who then formed the

Opposition in the Assembly. There can be no question that this was the

wisest line of policy he could adopt, and that it tended to remove the

differences between the two races, and unite them more cordially for the

common weal. The French Canadian element was no longer in the

ascendant--the English language had decidedly assumed the aggressive,

and true wisdom consisted in forgetting the past, and opening the door

of preferment to men of talent of French as well as to those of British

origin. The necessity of this line of policy was interwoven with the

Union Act; and, after that, was the first great step towards the

amalgamation of the races. A different policy would have nullified the

principle of Responsible Government, and must have proved suicidal to

any Ministry seeking to carry it out. Sir Charles Bagot went on the

broad principle that the constitutional majority had the right to rule

under the Constitution." Finding that the Ministry then in being did not

possess the public confidence, he called to his councils Robert Baldwin,

Francis Hincks, Lafontaine, Morin, and Aylwin. Upon the opening of the

Legislature, in the following September, he made a speech which showed

that he understood the situation and requirements of the country, and

was sincerely desirous of promoting its welfare. The session, which was

a brief one, passed without any specially noteworthy incidents. Soon

after the prorogation, which took place on the 8th of October, Sir

Charles began to feel the effects of approaching winter in a rigorous

climate. His physicians advised him, as he valued his life, to free

himself from the cares of office, and betake himself to a milder clime.

He sent in his resignation, and prepared to return to England, but the

state of his health soon became so serious that he was unfit to endure

an ocean voyage in the middle of winter. He was destined never to see

his native land again. He lingered until the 19th of May, 1843, when he

sank quietly to rest, at Kingston, in the sixty-second year of his age.

LA SALLE.

The publication last year of a revised edition of Mr. Parkman's

"Discovery of the Great West" has made the compilation of a sketch of La

Salle's life a very easy task. Mr. Parkman has told about everything

that is worth telling--indeed, every important fact that is known--with

reference to the great explorer; and for the future, any brief account

of his life must necessarily be little more than a condensation of Mr.

Parkman's book. "It is the glory and the misfortune of France," says M.

Guizot, "to always lead the van in the march of civilization, without

having the wit to profit by the discoveries and the sagacious boldness

of her children. On the unknown roads which she has opened to human

enterprise she has too often left the fruits to be gathered by nations

less inventive, but more persevering." The life of the ardent explorer

whose achievements form the subject of this sketch affords an apt

commentary on the text of the eminent French historian above quoted.

Long prior to the date of La Salle's discoveries, Samuel de Champlain

had dreamed of and fruitlessly sought for a continuous water passage

across the American continent, and hoped to thereby establish a

profitable commerce with the Indies, China, and Japan. La Salle,

following in Champlain's footsteps, and dreaming the same wild dreams,

spent a great part of his life in attempting to do what his great

predecessor had failed in accomplishing. His discoveries, however,

extended over a much broader field. La Salle may practically be said to

have discovered the Great West. He crossed the Mississippi, which the

Jesuits had been the first to reach, and pushed on to the far south,

constructing forts in the midst of the most savage districts, and taking

possession of Louisiana in the name of King Louis XIV. Abandoned by many

of his comrades, and losing the most faithful of them by death; attacked

by savages, betrayed by his own hirelings, thwarted in his projects by

his enemies and his rivals, he at last met an inglorious death by

assassination, just as he was about to make his way back to New France.

He left the field open after him to the innumerable explorers of every

nation and every language who have since left their mark on those

measureless tracts. If but little benefit accrued to France from his

discoveries, the fault was not his. He has left an imperishable record

on the page of American history, and as a discoverer his name occupies a

place in early Canadian annals second only--_if_ second--to that of

Champlain himself.

Réné-Robert Cavelier, better known by his territorial patronymic of La

Salle, was born at Rouen, in Normandy, some time in the year 1643. The

exact date of his birth is unknown, but his baptism took place on the

22nd of November of that year, at which time it is probable that he was

only a few days old. His family had long been wealthy burghers of

Rouen, and there were no obstacles in the way of his receiving a liberal

education. He early displayed an aptitude for science and mathematics,

and, while still young, entered a Jesuit Seminary in his native town. By

this act, which constituted the first step towards taking holy orders,

he forfeited the inheritance which would otherwise have descended to

him--a forfeiture which does not seem at any time to have weighed very

heavily on his mind. He seems to have occupied for a short time the

position of a teacher in the Seminary. After profiting for several years

by the discipline taught in the establishment he requested and obtained

his discharge, obtaining high praise from the directors of the Seminary

for the diligence of his studies and the purity of his life. "The

cravings of a deep ambition," says Mr. Parkman, "the hunger of an

insatiable intellect, the intense longing for active achievement,

subdued in him all other passions; and among his faults the love of

pleasure had no part." His father had died a short time before La Salle

quitted the Seminary, and he would then have at once succeeded to a

large patrimony but for his connection with the Jesuits. A small

sum--amounting to several hundred livres--was handed over to him, and in

the spring of 1666 the young adventurer embarked for fame and fortune in

New France, towards which the attention of all western Europe was at

that time directed. He had already an elder brother in this country--the

Abbé Jean Cavelier, a Sulpician priest at Montreal. The Sulpicians had

established themselves there a few years before this time, and had

already become proprietors and feudal lords of the city and island. They

were granting out their lands to settlers on very easy terms, and La

Salle obtained a grant of a large tract of land a short distance above

the turbulent current now known as the Lachine Rapids. Here he became a

feudal proprietor and fur trader on his own account. Such a pursuit,

however, was far from satisfying the cravings of his ambition. Like

Champlain and all the early explorers, he dreamed of a passage to the

South Sea, and a new road for commerce to the riches of China and Japan.

Indians often came to his secluded settlement; and on one occasion he

was visited by a band of Seneca Iroquois, some of whom spent the winter

with him, and told him of a river called the Ohio, rising in their

country and flowing into the sea, but at such a distance that its mouth

could only be reached after a journey of eight or nine months. Evidently

the Ohio and the Mississippi are here merged into one. In accordance

with geographical views then prevalent, La Salle conceived that this

great river must needs flow into the "Vermilion Sea;" that is, the Gulf

of California. If so, it would give him what he sought--a western

passage to China, while, in any case, the populous Indian tribes said to

inhabit its banks might be made a source of great commercial profit. His

imagination took fire. His resolution was soon formed; and he descended

the St. Lawrence to Quebec, to gain the countenance of the Governor for

his intended exploration. Few men were more skilled than he in the art

of clear and plausible statement. Both the Governor (Courcelle), and the

Intendant (Talon) were readily won over to his plan; for which, however,

they seem to have given him no more substantial aid than that of the

Governor's letters patent authorizing the enterprise. The cost was to be

his own; and he had no money, having spent it all on his seigniory. He

therefore proposed that the Seminary, which had given it to him, should

buy it back again, with such improvements as he had made. Queylus, the

Superior, being favourably disposed towards him, consented, and bought

of him the greater part; while La Salle sold the remainder, including

the clearings, to one Milot, an ironmonger, for twenty-eight hundred

livres. With this he bought four canoes, with the necessary supplies,

and hired fourteen men. This being accomplished, he started on his

expedition, in the course of which he explored the southern shore of

Lake Ontario, and visited the Senecas in Western New York. Continuing

his journey, he passed the mouth of the Niagara River, where he heard

the roar of the mighty cataract, and passed on to an Indian encampment

near the present site of Hamilton. After much delay he reached a branch

of the Ohio, and descended at least as far as the rapids at Louisville,

where he was abandoned by his attendants, and was compelled to return,

his problem being yet unsolved.

But the time was not far distant when he was to make a much more

extended voyage than he had hitherto accomplished, and with somewhat

more important results. In 1672 Count Frontenac came over to Canada and

succeeded Courcelle as Governor of the colony. A friendship sprang up

between him and La Salle, and they began to form schemes of western

enterprise. Erelong we find the latter paying a flying visit to France,

and receiving from the King, mainly through his patron's influence, a

patent of nobility and a grant of Fort Frontenac--which had just before

been founded by the new Governor with imposing ceremonies--together with

a large tract of the contiguous territory. Then La Salle's serious

troubles may be said to have begun. His grant involved the exclusive

right of fur-traffic with the Indians on Lake Ontario, and though trade

was a secondary object with him, he nevertheless engaged in it as a

means of furthering his more ambitious schemes of exploration. The

merchants of Canada, envious of his influence and success, leagued

themselves against him, and resolved to accomplish his downfall. The

Jesuits also placed themselves in opposition to him, for his avowed

projects conflicted with theirs. La Salle aimed at the control of the

valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi, and the usufruct of half a

continent. The Jesuits were no longer supreme in Canada. In other words,

Canada was no longer simply a mission. It had become a colony. Temporal

interests and the civil power were constantly gaining ground. Therefore

the Jesuits looked with redoubled solicitude to their missions in the

West. They dreaded fur-traders, partly because they interfered with

their teachings and perverted their converts, and partly for other

reasons. La Salle was a fur-trader, and moreover aimed at occupation and

settlement. In short, he was a stumbling block in their path, and they

leagued themselves against him. Many of them engaged in underhand

dealings with the Indians, and while they refused absolution to all

Europeans who sold brandy to the natives, they turned a good many

dishonest pennies by selling it themselves. They laid all kinds of traps

for La Salle, and did not escape the suspicion of attempting to poison

him. It is certain that an attempt to destroy him in this fashion was

made, though he himself exonerates the Jesuits from participation in the

attempt. In the autumn of 1677 he again sailed for France, and while

there procured Royal letters patent authorizing him to prosecute his

schemes of western discovery, to erect forts at such places as he might

deem expedient, and to enjoy the exclusive right of traffic in buffalo

skins. With Henri de Tonty, an Italian officer, as his lieutenant, he

soon afterwards returned to Fort Frontenac, whence, in the autumn of

1678, he set out for the Great West.

The historian of this expedition was a mendacious Recollet friar, Father

Louis Hennepin, a name which has attained some notoriety in early

Canadian annals. Father Hennepin had come out to Canada three years

before the date at which we have arrived. Upon landing at Quebec he was

at once sent up to Fort Frontenac, as a missionary. He found that wild

spot in the western wilderness very much to his liking. He had not been

there long before he erected a gigantic cross, and superintended the

building of a chapel for himself and his colleague, Father Luke Buisset.

He seems to have discharged his duties with a reasonable amount of zeal.

He for some time gave himself up to instructing and endeavouring to

convert the Indians of the neighbourhood. Later on he visited other

Indian settlements, and made a noteworthy journey into the interior of

what is now the State of New York, where he preached the Gospel to

various tribes of the Five Nations, with indifferent success.

Upon receiving intelligence of La Salle's projected western journey, in

1678, Father Hennepin felt and expressed great eagerness to accompany

the expedition. Permission to do so having been obtained from his

Provincial, as well as from La Salle, he set out in advance of the

latter from Fort Frontenac, early in November, accompanied by the Sieur

De La Motte and a crew of sixteen sailors, embarked in a brigantine of

ten tons. They skirted the northern shore of Lake Ontario, and in due

time arrived at the Indian village of Taiaiagon, situated at the mouth

of a river near the present city of Toronto. The river was probably the

Humber, and the village was doubtless a collection of wigwams which have

left no trace behind them. From this point the explorers crossed the

lake to the mouth of the Niagara River, which they entered on the

morning of the 6th of December. They landed on the eastern side of the

stream, where the old fort of Niagara now stands. The site was then

occupied by a small village inhabited by Seneca Indians, many of whom

probably then beheld for the first time those wondrous pale-faces, the

fame of whose exploits had preceded them into the wilderness. As the

vessel rounded the opposite point the entire crew burst forth into

sacred song, and chanted "Te Deum Laudamus" until the anchor was cast

into the river. Later in the day they ascended several miles farther up

the stream, until they reached the present site of Lewiston, where they

built a rude dwelling of palisades. After remaining for some time,

waiting for La Salle to join them, they set off on an expedition into

the interior of New York, to pay a visit to a village of the Senecas.

In the meantime La Salle and Tonty had started from Fort Frontenac, with

a band of men and a goodly store of supplies for the expedition. After

encountering rough weather and being nearly wrecked off the Bay of

Quinté, they crossed the lake and landed at the mouth of the Genesee

River. Here they disembarked, and after a brief delay, started on a

visit to the same Indian village which had just been visited by Hennepin

and La Motte, and which was a short distance south-east of the present

site of the city of Rochester. La Salle called a council of the natives,

and did his utmost to conciliate them, for they looked upon his

proceedings with no friendly eye, and were not slow in expressing their

disapproval. They were wise enough to know that European exploration

would be but the forerunner of European settlement, and that European

settlement must be the "sullen presage of their own decay." La Salle,

however, had a great deal of personal magnetism and force of character,

and contrived to gain the good-will of several of the chiefs. After much

argument and cajoling, he succeeded in gaining their consent to the

conveyance of his arms and ammunition by way of the portage at Niagara.

They also acquiesced in his proposal to establish a fortified warehouse

at the mouth of the river, and to build a vessel above the falls in

which to prosecute his researches in the west. Having accomplished so

much--and considering the jealousy of the Indians, it is surprising

that he should have obtained such concessions--he set out to join

Hennepin and La Motte in the Niagara River, which had been appointed as

their place of meeting.

Father Hennepin and La Motte had not long taken up their quarters on the

banks of the Niagara River before they ascended the stream to regale

themselves with a view of the mighty cataract of which they had so often

heard with awe and astonishment. To the skill of the mendacious priest

we are indebted for the first verbal description of the falls by an

eye-witness, as well as for the first artistic delineation of them. The

friar had a keen eye for the beauties and grandeur of natural scenery;

but, like other travellers before and since his time, he was much given

to dealing in the marvellous. His view is drawn in direct violation of

the laws of perspective, and the proportions are not correctly

preserved. It must be remembered, however, that during the two hundred

years which have elapsed since the sketch was made, nature has been

steadily at work, and that the external appearance of the falls has

undergone many changes in that time. It is probable, too, that the

cross-fall depicted in his sketch as pouring over what has since been

called "Table Rock" really existed in 1678. Upon the whole, there is no

reason for doubting that in its general outlines the sketch made by

Father Hennepin pourtrayed the scene more faithfully than did his

written description, of which the following is a literal translation:

"Betwixt the Lake Ontario and the Lake Erie there is a vast and

prodigious cadence of water, which falls down after a surprising and

astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its

parallel. This wonderful downfall is about six hundred feet, and is

composed of two great cross-streams of water, and two falls, with an

island sloping across the middle of it. The waters which fall from this

horrible precipice do foam and boil after the most hideous manner

imaginable, making an outrageous noise, more terrible than that of

thunder; for when the wind blows out of the south their dismal roaring

may be heard more than fifteen leagues off."

Hennepin and La Motte were soon afterwards joined by La Salle and Tonty,

accompanied by a party consisting of mechanics, labourers and voyageurs,

who arrived in a small schooner. After a short exploration of the

country thereabouts La Salle set about the construction of a large

vessel of forty-five tons, for the prosecution of his western voyage.

The ship-yard was located six miles above the Falls, near the mouth of

Cayuga Creek, where the work of shipbuilding was carried on throughout

the winter, spring, and early summer. At last the new vessel--the

ill-fated _Griffin_ (the first European craft that ever navigated the

waters of the upper lakes)--was completed, and on the 7th of August,

1679, the adventurers embarked and sailed into Lake Erie--"where sail

was never seen before." They passed on to the westward end of the lake,

and up between the green islands of the stream now known as the Detroit

River; crossed Lake St. Clair, and entered Lake Huron. In due course,

after encountering a furious tempest, they reached Michillimackinac,

where was a Jesuit Mission and centre of the fur trade. Passing on into

Lake Michigan, La Salle and his company cast anchor in Green Bay. The

_Griffin_ was forthwith laden with rich furs, and sent back to Niagara,

with orders to turn over the cargo to La Salle's creditors, and return

immediately. This is the last item respecting her which history affords.

Whether she foundered or was captured by the Jesuits or Indians remains

an open question to this day, and no certain tidings of her, subsequent

to her departure eastward from Green Bay, ever reached the ears of her

commander.

Meanwhile, his creditors, from whom he had purchased his supplies, and

with whom he was heavily involved, were selling his effects at Montreal.

He himself, with his company in scattered groups, repaired in bark

canoes to the head of Lake Michigan; and at the mouth of the St. Joseph

he constructed a trading-house with palisades, known as the Fort of the

Miamis. Of his vessel, on which his fortunes so much depended, no

tidings came. Weary of delay, he resolved to penetrate Illinois; and

leaving ten men to guard the Fort of the Miamis, La Salle himself, with

Hennepin, Tonty, and about thirty followers, ascended the St. Joseph,

and by a short portage over bogs and swamps made dangerous by a snow

storm, entered the Kankakee. Descending this narrow stream, before the

end of December, 1679, the little company had reached the site of an

Indian village on the Illinois, probably not far from Ottoway, in La

Salle county. The tribe was absent, passing the winter in the chase. On

the banks of Lake Peoria Indians appeared, who, desirous to obtain axes

and firearms, offered the calumet of peace, and agreed to an alliance.

They described the course of the Mississippi, and they were willing to

guide the strangers to its mouth. The spirit and prudence of La Salle,

who was the life of the enterprise, won the friendship of the natives.

But clouds lowered over his path. The _Griffin_, it seemed certain, was

wrecked, thus delaying his discoveries as well as impairing his

fortunes. His men began to despond. He toiled to revive their courage,

and assured them that there could be no safety but in union. "None," he

added, "shall stay after the spring, unless from choice." But fear and

discontent pervaded the company; and when La Salle, thwarted by destiny,

and almost despairing, planned and began to build a fort on the banks of

the Illinois, four days' journey below Lake Peoria, he named it

Crèvecoeur (Heart-break). Yet even here the immense power of his will

appeared. Dependent on himself, fifteen hundred miles from the nearest

French settlement, impoverished, harassed by enemies at Quebec and in

the wilderness, he inspired his men with resolution to saw trees into

plank and prepare a barque. He despatched Hennepin to explore the Upper

Mississippi; he questioned the Illinois and the captives on the course

of that river; he formed conjectures respecting the course of the

Tennessee. Then, as new recruits and sails and cordage for the barque

were needed, in the month of March, with a musket and pouch of powder

and shot, with a blanket for his protection and skins of which to make

moccasins, he, with three companions, set off on foot for Fort

Frontenac, to trudge through thickets and forests, to wade through

marshes and melting snows; without drink, except water from the running

brooks; without food, except such precarious supplies as could be

provided by his gun. After enduring dangers and hardships which would

have effectually damped the ardour of any one but a French adventurer of

that time; after narrowly escaping a plot to poison him; after being

deserted by some of his followers, and threatened with all sorts of

unknown penalties by the savages, he finally, after sixty-five days'

journeying, arrived at Fort Frontenac on the 6th of May, 1680. But "man

and nature seemed in arms against him." He found that during his absence

his agents had plundered him, that his creditors had seized his

property, and that several of his canoes, richly laden, had been lost in

the rapids of the St. Lawrence. Another vessel which had been despatched

with supplies for him from France had also been shipwrecked. Instead of

sitting down to mourn over these mishaps, however, they seemed to

inspire him with fresh vigour. Descending to Montreal, he in less than a

week procured what supplies he needed, and returned to Fort Frontenac.

Just as he was about to embark for Illinois, messengers arrived with

intelligence that Tonty had been abandoned by his companions, and had

been compelled to take shelter with a band of Pottawatomie Indians.

Undiscouraged by the manifold disasters which had befallen him, La Salle

once more set out from Fort Frontenac for the regions of the Great West.

Instead of following the route by Lake Erie and the Detroit and St.

Clair Rivers, as he had previously done, he crossed over to the Georgian

Bay by way of the River Humber, which was on the line of one of the

three great westward routes in those times. He was accompanied by

twenty-five assistants, including his lieutenant, one La Forest, and a

surgeon. In due course they reached Michillimackinac, which was then the

great north-western dépôt of the fur trade. Here he found that his old

enemies the Jesuits had been busy poisoning the minds of the natives

against him, insomuch that it was only with difficulty that he could

induce the latter to sell him provisions. After a brief delay he resumed

his journey, passing numerous camps of the terrible Iroquois, who, tired

of devastating the more eastern districts, were now spreading desolation

through these western regions. Upon reaching Fort Crèvecoeur he found it

deserted, and neither here nor elsewhere, for many days to come, was he

able to gain any intelligence of his trusty ally, Tonty, who had been

left behind on the former expedition, as already narrated. He continued

his course southward, and erelong found himself on the banks of the

Mississippi--the mighty Father of Waters, "the object of his day dreams,

the destined avenue of his ambition and his hopes." Finding no traces of

Tonty, he determined to look for him further northward, and retraced his

footsteps to Fort Miami, on the St. Joseph, near Lake Michigan, where he

spent the winter. "Here," says Mr. Parkman, "he might have brooded on

the redoubled ruin that had befallen him; the desponding friends, the

exulting foes; the wasted energies, the crushing load of debt, the

stormy past, the black and lowering future. But his mind was of a

different temper. He had no thought but to grapple with adversity, and

out of the fragments of his ruin to build up the fabric of success. He

would not recoil; but he modified his plans to meet the new contingency.

His white enemies had found--or rather, perhaps, had made--a savage ally

in the Iroquois. Their incursions must be stopped, or his enterprise

would come to naught; and he thought he saw the means by which this new

danger could be converted into a source of strength. The tribes of the

west, threatened by the common enemy, might be taught to forget their

mutual animosities and join in a defensive league, with La Salle at its

head. They might be colonized around his fort in the valley of the

Illinois, where, in the shadow of the French flag, and with the aid of

French allies they could hold the Iroquois in check, and acquire in some

measure the arts of a settled life. The Franciscan friars could teach

them the Faith; La Salle and his associates could supply them with

goods, in exchange for the vast harvest of furs which their hunters

could gather in these boundless wilds. Meanwhile, he could seek out the

mouth of the Mississippi; and the furs gathered at his colony in the

Illinois would then find a ready passage to the markets of the world.

Thus might this ancient slaughter-field of warring savages be redeemed

to civilization and Christianity, and a stable settlement, half feudal,

half commercial, grow up in the heart of the western wilderness. This

plan was but a part of the original scheme of his enterprise, adapted to

new and unexpected circumstances; and he now set himself to its

execution with his usual vigour, joined to an address that, when dealing

with Indians, never failed him."

In pursuance of this scheme he called a council of all the Indian chiefs

for leagues round, and entered into a formal covenant with them. His

new project was hopefully begun. It remained to achieve the enterprise,

twice defeated, of the discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi. To

this end, he must return to Canada, appease his creditors, and collect

his scattered resources. Towards the end of May he set out in canoes

from Fort Miami, and, after a prosperous voyage, reached

Michillimackinac. Here, to his great joy, he found Tonty and one Zenobe

Membré, who had lately arrived from Green Bay. Without loss of time,

they embarked together for Fort Frontenac, paddled their canoes a

thousand miles, and safely reached their destination. Here, in this

third beginning of his enterprise, La Salle found himself beset with

embarrassments. Not only was he burdened with the fruitless cost of his

two former efforts, but the heavy debts which he had incurred in

building and maintaining Fort Frontenac had not been wholly paid. The

fort and the seigniory were already deeply mortgaged; yet, through the

influence of the Count de Frontenac, and the support of a wealthy

relative, he found means to appease his creditors, and even to gain

fresh advances. He mustered his men, and once more set forth, resolved

to trust no more to agents, but to lead on his followers in a united

body under his own personal command.

Returning westward, he once more reached Fort Miami, whence, on the 26th

of December, 1682, he set out for the mouth of the Mississippi, whither

he arrived during the month of April following. "As he drifted down the

turbid current, between the low and marshy shores, the brackish water

changed to brine, and the breeze grew fresh with the salt breath of the

sea. Then the broad bosom of the great Gulf opened on his sight, tossing

its restless billows, limitless, voiceless, lonely as when born of

chaos, without a sail, without a sign of life." La Salle, in a canoe,

coasted the marshy borders of the sea; and then assembled his companions

on a spot of dry ground, a short distance above the mouth of the river.

In this wild spot, on the ninth of the month, which was the month of

April, 1682, he planted a column bearing the arms of France and an

inscription to Louis Le Grand. "On that day," says the writer already

quoted from, "the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous

accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the

Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of

the Gulf, from the woody ridges of the Rocky Mountains--a region of

savannahs and forests, sun-cracked deserts and grassy prairies,

inhabited by innumerable warlike tribes--passed beneath the sceptre of

the Sultan of Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice,

inaudible at half a mile." Louisiana was the name bestowed by La Salle

on this new domain of the French crown, which stretched from the

Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains; from the Rio Grande and the Gulf to

the farthest springs of the Missouri.

Retracing his steps, he founded on the banks of the Illinois River a

colony of French and Indians, to answer the double purpose of a bulwark

against the Iroquois and a place of storage for the furs of all the

western tribes; and he hoped in the following year to secure an outlet

for this colony, and for all the trade of the valley of the Mississippi,

by occupying the mouth of that river with a fort and another colony. The

site of the colony was near the spot now occupied by the village of

Utica, in the State of Illinois. Early in the following autumn he placed

Tonty in charge of it, and made the best of his way to Quebec, whence he

soon afterwards sailed for France. He had an interview with the King, to

whom he unfolded his schemes. Louis, notwithstanding the machinations of

La Salle's enemies, took a favourable view of the latter's enterprises,

and in the month of July, 1684, we find him setting sail from Rochelle

with a fleet of four vessels and a small army of recruits, composed of

soldiers, gentlemen, artisans and labourers. Their destination was not

Canada, but the Gulf of Mexico; La Salle having obtained the royal

authority for a vast scheme of trade and colonization on the

Mississippi, to which was tacked on a wild and impracticable scheme of

conquest of the Spanish settlements in Mexico. One of the vessels, laden

with provisions and other necessaries for the projected colony, was

captured by buccaneers. The other three, after calling at St. Domingo,

entered the Mexican Gulf. La Salle, when at the mouth of the Mississippi

nearly three years before, had taken the latitude, but for some reason

or other had no clue to the longitude, and the consequence was that he

now sailed more than four hundred miles too far west. He landed on the

coast of Texas, and spent some time in exploration before he became

convinced of his error. Meanwhile he was constantly quarrelling with

Beaujeu, his naval commander, as well as with other members of the

expedition. Add to this that he was repeatedly prostrated by attacks of

fever, and in constant expectation of being attacked by the savages of

the neighbourhood; and it will be confessed that his situation was not a

very enviable one. To add to his perplexities, one of his vessels went

aground, and a great part of the cargo was lost. About this time Beaujeu

set out to return to France. He had accomplished his mission, and landed

his passengers at what La Salle assured him to be one of the mouths of

the Mississippi. His ship was in danger on this exposed and perilous

coast, and he was anxious to find shelter. After some delay, La Salle

erected a fort on Lavaca River, in which he placed the women and

children and most of the men who formed part of the expedition, and with

the rest of the men set out to renew his search for the mouth of the

Mississippi. He set out from the fort--which he called Fort St.

Louis--with fifty men, on the 31st of October, 1685, to find the mouth

of "the fatal river"--by which name it had come to be known among the

band of adventurers. Five months were spent in wanderings through the

wilds of that region, during which the hardships and sufferings were

such as to baffle description, but the object of their quest still

seemed as remote as ever. At last, weary and dispirited, the survivors

returned to Fort St. Louis, where La Salle fell dangerously ill, and for

some time his life was despaired of. No sooner had he recovered than he

determined to make his way by the Mississippi and the Illinois to

Canada, whence he might bring succour to the colonists, and send a

report of their condition to France. The attempt was beset with

uncertainties and dangers. The Mississippi was first to be found, then

followed through all the perilous monotony of its interminable windings

to a goal which was to be but the starting point of a new and not less

arduous journey. Twenty men, including La Salle's brother, the Abbé

Cavelier, and Moranget, his nephew, were detailed to accompany him. On

the 22nd of April, 1686, after mass and prayers in the chapel, they

issued from the gate, each bearing his pack and his weapons, some with

kettles slung at their backs, some with axes, some with gifts for

Indians. In this guise they held their way in silence across the

prairie. They travelled north-easterly, and encountered a due share of

adventures with wild beasts and Indian savages. They traversed a large

extent of country, but the attempt to discover the mouth of the

Mississippi proved wholly ineffectual. After several months La Salle and

eight of his twenty men returned to Fort St. Louis. Of the rest, four

had deserted, one had been lost, one had been devoured by an alligator;

and the rest, giving out on the march, had probably perished in

attempting to regain the fort.

The journey to Canada, however, was clearly the only hope of the

colonists, and on the 6th of January, 1687, the attempt to make it was

renewed. The band of adventurers this time consisted of eighteen

persons. At their head was La Salle himself. His brother and nephew,

already mentioned, were also of the party. Of the others the only ones

necessary to specify are Joutel, La Salle's trusty henchman, the second

in command; Hiens, a German, formerly a pirate of the Spanish Main;

Duhaut, a man of respectable birth and education, but a cruel and

remorseless villain; and l'Archévêque, his servant; Liotot, the surgeon

of the expedition; Teissier, a pilot; Douay, a friar; and Nika, a

Shawnee Indian, who was a devoted friend of La Salle's. They proceeded

northward. The members of the party were incongruous, and did not agree

one with another. Duhaut and Liotot were disappointed at the ruinous

result of their enterprise. They had a quarrel with young Moranget.

Already at Fort St. Louis Duhaut had intrigued against La Salle, against

whom Liotot had also secretly sworn vengeance. On the 15th of March they

encamped within a few miles of a spot which La Salle had passed on his

preceding journey, and where he had left a quantity of Indian corn and

beans in a _caçhe_. As provisions were falling short he sent a party

from the camp to find it. These men were Duhaut, Liotot, Hiens the

buccaneer, Teissier, l'Archévêque, Nika the hunter, and La Salle's

servant, Saget. They opened the _caçhe_, and found the contents spoiled;

but as they returned they saw buffalo, and Nika shot two of them. They

now encamped on the spot, and sent the servant to inform La Salle, in

order that he might send horses to bring in the meat. Accordingly, on

the next day he directed Moranget and another, with the necessary

horses, to go with Saget to the hunters' camp. When they arrived they

found that Duhaut and his companions had already cut up the meat, and

laid it upon scaffolds for smoking, and had also put by for themselves

certain portions to which, by woodland custom, they had a perfect right.

Moranget fell into an unreasonable fit of rage, and seized the whole of

the meat. This added fuel to the fire of Duhaut's old grudge against

Moranget and his uncle. The surgeon also bore hatred against Moranget.

The two took counsel apart with Hiens, Teissier, and l'Archévêque, and

it was resolved to kill Moranget, Nika and Saget. All the five were of

one mind, except the pilot Teissier, who neither aided nor opposed the

scheme. When night came on, the order of the guard was arranged; and the

first hour was assigned to Moranget, the second to Saget, and the third

to Nika. Gun in hand, each stood watch in turn. Duhaut and Hiens stood

with their guns cocked, ready to shoot down any one of the victims who

should resist. Saget, Nika and Moranget were ruthlessly butchered, and

then it was resolved that La Salle should share their fate. La Salle was

still at his camp, six miles distant. Next morning, having heard nothing

of Moranget or the others, he set out to find them, accompanied by his

Indian guide, and by Douay, the friar. "All the way," writes the friar,

"he spoke to me of nothing but matters of piety, grace, and

predestination; enlarging on the debt he owed to God, who had saved him

from so many perils during more than twenty years of travel in America.

Suddenly, I saw him overwhelmed with a profound sadness, for which he

himself could not account. He was so much moved that I scarcely knew

him." He soon recovered his usual calmness, and they walked on till they

approached the camp of Duhaut, on the farther side of a small river.

Looking about him, La Salle saw two eagles circling in the air, as if

attracted by the carcasses of beasts or men. He fired his gun and his

pistol as a summons. The shots reached the ears of the conspirators, who

fired from their place of concealment, and La Salle, shot through the

brain, sank lifeless on the ground. Douay stood terror-stricken. Duhaut

called out to him that he had nothing to fear. The murderers came

forward and gathered about their victim. "There thou liest, great

Bashaw! There thou liest!" exclaimed the surgeon Liotot, in base

exultation over the unconscious corpse. With mockery and insult, they

stripped it naked, dragged it into the bushes, and left it there a prey

to the buzzards and the wolves. It is sad to think that such was the

fate of the veritable Discoverer of the Great West.

"Thus," says Mr. Parkman, "in the vigour of his manhood, at the age of

forty-three, died Robert Cavelier de la Salle, 'one of the greatest

men,' writes Tonty, 'of this age;' without question one of the most

remarkable explorers whose names live in history. The enthusiasm of the

disinterested and chivalrous Champlain was not the enthusiasm of La

Salle; nor had he any part in the self-devoted zeal of the early Jesuit

explorers. He belonged not to the age of the knight-errant and the

saint, but to the modern world of practical study and action. He was the

hero, not of a principle nor of a faith, but simply of a fixed idea and

a determined purpose. It is easy to reckon up his defects, but it is not

easy to hide from sight the Roman virtues that redeemed them. Beset by a

throng of enemies, he stands, like the King of Israel, head and

shoulders above them all. He was a tower of adamant, against whose

impregnable front hardship and danger, the rage of man and of the

elements, the southern sun, the northern blast, fatigue, famine and

disease, delay, disappointment and deferred hope, emptied their quivers

in vain. Never under the impenetrable mail of paladin or crusader beat a

heart of more intrepid mettle than within the stoic panoply that armed

the breast of La Salle. To estimate aright the marvels of his patient

fortitude, one must follow on his track through the vast scene of his

interminable journeyings, those thousands of weary miles of forest,

marsh and river, where again and again, in the bitterness of baffled

striving, the untiring pilgrim pushed onwards towards the goal which he

was never to attain. America owes him an enduring memory; for in this

masculine figure she sees the pioneer who guided her to the possession

of her richest heritage."

THE RIGHT REV. JAMES W. WILLIAMS, D.D.,

_BISHOP OF QUEBEC._

Bishop Williams is a son of the late Rev. David Williams, who was for

many years Rector of Banghurst, Hampshire, England. He was born at the

town of Overton, Hampshire, in 1825, and his childhood was chiefly

passed in that neighbourhood. He was intended for holy orders from his

earliest years. In his boyhood he attended for some time at an

educational establishment at Crewkerne, a town in the south-eastern part

of Somersetshire, whence he passed to Pembroke College, Oxford. His

collegiate course was not specially noteworthy, but was marked by

considerable diligence. He graduated as B.A. in 1851, taking honours in

classics. He in due course obtained his degrees of M.A. and D.D. He was

admitted to Deacon's Orders by the Lord Bishop of Oxford, and (in 1856)

to Priest's Orders by the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells. He for a short

time held curacies respectively in Buckinghamshire and Somersetshire.

His classical attainments were of more than average excellence, and

seeing no prospect of immediate advancement in England, he in 1857 came

over to Canada to assist in organizing a school in connection with

Bishop's College, Lennoxville. Within a short time after his arrival he

was appointed Rector of the College Grammar School, and soon afterwards

succeeded to the Classical Professorship of the College, a position

which he retained until his elevation to the Episcopacy.

Upon the death of the late Right Rev. George Jehoshaphat Mountain,

Bishop of Quebec, in 1863, the subject of this sketch was appointed his

successor by the Synod; and on the 11th of June of that year he was

consecrated at Quebec by the Most Reverend the Metropolitan, assisted by

the Bishops of Toronto, Ontario, Huron and Vermont. His first Episcopal

act was to advance three Deacons to the Priesthood.

The See over which his jurisdiction extends was constituted in the year

1793, and formerly comprised the whole of Upper and Lower Canada. Its

extent has since been from time to time curtailed, and it is now

confined to that part of the Province of Quebec extending from Three

Rivers to the Straits of Belleisle and New Brunswick, on the shores of

the St. Lawrence and all east of a line drawn from Three Rivers to Lake

Memphremagog.

Bishop Williams is a plain and unaffected preacher, and a man of

scholarly tastes. He makes no pretence to showy or splendid gifts of

pulpit oratory, but is known as an energetic and industrious

ecclesiastic, careful for the spiritual welfare of his diocese and

clergy. Several of his lectures and sermons have been published, and

have been highly commended by the religious press of Canada and the

United States. Among them may be mentioned his Charge delivered to the

Clergy of the Diocese of Quebec, at the Visitation held in Bishop's

College, Lennoxville, in 1864; and a lecture on Self-Education,

published at Quebec in 1865.

[Illustration: CASIMIR STANISLAUS GZOWSKI, signed as C. S. GZOWSKI]

LIEUT.-COL. CASIMIR STANISLAUS GZOWSKI,

_AIDE-DE-CAMP TO HER MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA._

In compiling the various sketches which have appeared in the present

series, the editor has frequently been compelled to encounter the

difficulty of constructing a readable narrative out of very sparse and

prosaic materials. A collection of this kind must necessarily include

the lives of many professional and scientific men; and eminence in

literature, in science, and in the learned professions, is commonly

attained by means which--however interesting to those most immediately

concerned--seem wonderfully commonplace to the general public, when

reduced to plain, matter-of-fact narration. As a rule, stirring and

romantic incidents are incompatible with a successful professional

career, and in recounting the life of a learned divine, Chief Justice,

or man of science, it is rarely necessary to deal with thrilling

incidents or dramatic situations. The lives of such men are usually

passed within a narrow and restricted groove, and the salient points may

easily be comprised within a few lines. In the life of Colonel Gzowski,

on the other hand, we have an instance of a remarkably successful

professional career, combined with a chapter of vicissitude and

adventure which, in the hands of a writer familiar with all the details,

might very well form the groundwork of a sensation novel. His elasticity

of spirits, strength of will, and vigour of constitution have supported

him through an amount of labour, fatigue and suffering to which a more

feeble mind and a more delicately-constructed frame must inevitably have

succumbed long ago. Such a life as his commonly leaves very perceptible

traces behind it. In his case no such traces are discernible. Neither in

his visage, his gait, nor his manner, can the most observant eye detect

any sign that his pathway has not always been strewn with roses. No one

remarking his erect and firmly-knit figure, his jauntiness of step, and

his keenness of glance, as he perambulates our streets, would readily

believe that he is rapidly approaching his sixty-eighth birthday. Still

less would it be supposed that he has passed through adventures enough

for a knight-errant; that he has fought and bled in the fierce struggle

for a nation's existence; that he has had his full share of the horrors

of war; that he has languished in a patriot's prison; and that some of

the best years of his life were passed in a hard struggle for existence

in a foreign land. As we pass in review the alternating phases of his

chequered career we seem to be contemplating a shifting panorama of the

novelist's fancy, rather than a veracious chronicle of facts. The story

of his life can be adequately narrated by no other pen than his own, and

for many years past he has found more profitable employment for his

talents than the inditing of autobiographical memoirs. In the absence of

any such memoirs, be it ours to place on record such of the more salient

points of his life as are readily ascertainable.

He is descended from an ancient Polish family which was ennobled in the

sixteenth century, and which for more than two hundred years thereafter

continued to exercise an influence upon the national affairs. His

father, Stanislaus, Count (Hrabia) Gzowski, was an officer of the

Imperial Guard. He himself was born on the 5th of March, 1813, at St.

Petersburg, the Russian capital, where his parents were then temporarily

sojourning. His childhood was spent as the childhood of most Polish

children of his station in life was passed in those days--viz., in

preparation for a military career. At nine years of age he entered a

military engineering college at Kremenetz, in the Province of Volhynia,

where he remained until 1830, when he graduated as an engineer, received

a commission, and entered the army of Russia.

The Russian Empire was at this time on the verge of one of those

periodical insurrections to which she had long been subject, more

especially since the final partition and absorption of Poland, and the

annihilation of the Polish monarchy. In 1825, Nicholas I. succeeded his

elder brother Alexander on the throne of Russia. He had not long been

installed there before he gave evidence of that aggressive policy which

he pursued through life, and which nearly thirty years later involved

him in the Crimean War. Some years before his accession, his elder

brother Constantine, the heir-apparent to the throne, had been entrusted

with the military government of Poland, and in 1822 had resigned his

right to the Russian throne in Nicholas's favour. Upon the latter's

accession he continued his elder brother in his sovereignty of Poland.

Constantine's administration of affairs in that unhappy country was

arbitrary and despotic in the extreme, and little calculated to mollify

the heartburnings of the inhabitants. His oppressions were not confined

to the serfs, but extended to the nobility. The result of his tyranny

was the formation of secret societies with a view to striking one more

blow for Polish liberty. A widespread insurrection, wherein most of the

Polish officers in the Imperial army were involved, finally broke out in

1830--the year in which the subject of this sketch received his

commission. The success of the concurrent revolution in France, and the

forced abdication of Charles X., inspired the insurgents with high

hopes. In November of the year last mentioned the Grand Duke Constantine

and his Russian adherents were driven out of Warsaw, the Polish capital.

If the insurrectionary forces had been thoroughly organized, and if they

had not been subjected to extraneous interference, there is reason for

believing that their country might have been freed from the hateful

domination of the Czar. Notwithstanding all the manifold disabilities

under which they carried on the contest, they achieved a temporary

success. After the expulsion of Constantine, a provisional government

was formed under the presidency of Prince Czartoryski, and a series of

desperate engagements was fought in which the patriots had in almost

every instance a decided advantage. Their desperate courage and

self-devotion, however, were of no permanent avail, for Prussia and

Austria both lent their assistance to crush them, and towards the close

of 1831 Warsaw was recaptured by the allied forces under Count

Paskevitch, who was forthwith installed as viceroy of Poland. The

crushing of the insurrection was of course marked by merciless severity

and cruelty. In 1832 Poland was declared to be an integral part of the

Russian Empire, and all the important prisoners were either put to

death, banished to Siberia, or compelled to endure the horrors of a

Russian prison.

Throughout the whole of this fruitless insurrection Casimir Stanislaus

Gzowski played a conspicuous part. He cast in his lot with his

compatriots from the beginning; was present at the expulsion of

Constantine from Warsaw, in November, 1830, and was actively engaged in

numerous important conflicts that ensued. He was wounded, and several

times narrowly escaped capture. We have no means of closely following

him through the hazardous exploits of that dark and sanguinary period.

Persons who are familiar with the history of Polish insurrections will

be at no loss to conjecture the "hair-breadth 'scapes, and moving

accidents by flood and field," which he encountered in that desperate

struggle for a nation's freedom. After the battle of Boremel, General

Dwernicki's division, to which he was attached, retreated into Austrian

territory, where the troops laid down their arms and became prisoners.

The rank and file were permitted to depart whithersoever they would, but

the officers, to the number of about six hundred, were placed in

durance, and quartered in several fortified stations. There they

languished for several months, when, by an arrangement entered into

between the governments of Russia and Austria, they were shipped off as

exiles to the United States.

When Mr. Gzowski, with his fellow-exiles, landed at New York in the

summer of 1833, he had no knowledge whatever of the English language.

When the pilot came on board at Sandy Hook, and saluted the captain of

the vessel, he heard that language spoken for the first time. Like most

members of the Polish and Russian aristocracy, he was an accomplished

linguist, and was familiar with many of the continental languages; but

it was a part of the Russian policy in those days to exclude English

books from the public schools, and to prevent by every conceivable means

the spread of English ideas among the people. During his course of study

at the military college at Kremenetz, one of the Professors had

exhibited an English book to him as a sort of outlandish curiosity. He

now found himself in a strange land, without means, without any friends

except his fellow-exiles--who were as helpless in that respect as

himself--and without any prospect of obtaining employment. He possessed

qualifications, however, which, as the event proved, were of more value

than mere worldly wealth. He had been a diligent student, and had

acquired what must have been, for a youth of twenty years, a thorough

knowledge of engineering. He was, as has been remarked, a good linguist,

and had not merely a grammatical, but a practical knowledge of the

French, German and Italian languages. Better than all these, he was

endowed with an iron constitution, which even the rigours of an Austrian

prison had not been able to injure, and a strength of will which would

not admit the possibility of failure. Some idea of his resolution may be

formed from the fact that, when he found that his want of knowledge of

English prevented him from following the engineering profession with

advantage, he determined to study law as a means of acquiring a mastery

of the English tongue. After subsisting for some months in New York by

giving lessons in French and German, he betook himself to Pittsfield,

Massachusetts, where he entered the office of the late Mr. Parker L.

Hall, an eminent lawyer of that town, and a gentleman of high social

position. The facility displayed by the natives of Poland and Russia in

acquiring a knowledge of foreign languages is well known, but the

achievements of Mr. Gzowski at this time seem almost phenomenal. It must

be borne in mind that while he was studying law in a tongue which was

foreign to him, he was compelled to support himself by outside

employment. He obtained his livelihood by teaching modern languages,

drawing, and fencing, in two of the local academies. He worked early and

late, and was at first obliged to study the commentaries of Blackstone

and Kent through the medium of a dictionary. In nothing did he appear

to greater advantage than in his invariable readiness to adapt his

mind, without useless repining, to the circumstances in which he found

himself. His indomitable industry, natural ability, and fine social

qualities, combined with his misfortunes to make him a marked man in

Pittsfield society. He gained many warm friends, but was always wise

enough to remember that his success in life must mainly depend upon his

own exertions. In the month of February, 1837, when he had been studying

his profession about three years, he passed a successful examination,

and was only prevented from being admitted to practice by his not having

become a naturalized citizen of the United States. A knowledge of the

legal profession, however, was with him merely a means to an end. He had

no intention of permanently devoting himself to legal practice, and had

always contemplated returning to his profession of an engineer. He had

by this time acquired a competent knowledge of the English language, and

had begun to look about him for some suitable field for his exertions.

The development of the coal regions of Pennsylvania was attracting a

good deal of attention at this time, and it occurred to him that he

might not improbably find employment there. A visit to that State tended

to confirm his views, and in November Term, 1837, having submitted the

necessary proofs, and taken the oath of allegiance, he was duly admitted

as a citizen of the United States, before the Prothonotary of the Court

of Common Pleas, in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. He had brought with him

from Pittsfield numerous letters of introduction to persons of high

social position and influence, all bearing testimony to his

unimpeachable character and wide attainments. The only obstacle to his

admission to practice having been removed, he was enrolled as an

advocate at the Bar of the Supreme Court, and for a short time acted as

an advocate in Pennsylvania. This, however, was not the line of action

for which he considered himself best qualified, nor did the prospect

held out to him satisfy his ambition. He soon obtained employment as an

engineer in connection with the great canals and public works, and

abandoned the law as a profession. He became interested in several

contracts, which were faithfully and skilfully carried out; and wherever

he went he won the reputation of a delightful companion and a thoroughly

honourable man.

Early in 1841 the project of widening and deepening the Welland Canal

began to be discussed with some vehemence in Upper Canada. With a view

to securing a contract, Mr. Gzowski came over from Erie, Pennsylvania

(where he then resided), to Toronto, and for the first time was brought

into contact with some of the leading public men of Canada. The

Government was then administered by Sir Charles Bagot, a gentleman whose

infirm state of health did not prevent him from taking a warm interest

in the public improvements of the country. Sir Charles formed a high

opinion of Mr. Gzowski's talents, and sanctioned his appointment to an

office in connection with the Department of Public Works. This

appointment having been accepted by Mr. Gzowski, he bade adieu to his

many friends in the United States, and took up his abode in Upper

Canada.

During the next six years Mr. Gzowski's life was entirely occupied by

his duties in connection with the Department of Public Works. It is

manifestly out of the question to give even an epitome of the numberless

important enterprises conducted by him during this, the busiest period

of his active life. His reports of the works in connection with

harbours, bridges and highways alone occupy a considerable portion of a

large folio volume. It will be sufficient to say that every important

provincial improvement came under his supervision, and that nearly

every county in Upper Canada bears upon its surface the impress of his

great industry and engineering skill. In 1846 he obtained naturalization

and became a British subject. Soon after the accession to power of the

Baldwin-Lafontaine Government, in 1848, his services in an official

capacity were brought to a close, and he began to enter upon large

engineering enterprises on his own account. Towards the end of the year

1848 he published a report on the mines of the Upper Canada Mining

Company on Lake Huron. But his mind was occupied by more important

schemes. The railway era set in. The Railroad Guarantee Act, authorizing

Government grants to private companies undertaking the construction of

railways, having been passed in 1849, the public began to hear of

various railway projects of greater or lesser importance. The first

great enterprise of this sort with which Mr. Gzowski connected himself

was the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad Company, from Montreal to

Island Pond, which has since been amalgamated with the Grand Trunk. Mr.

Gzowski was appointed Chief Engineer of this undertaking, made a survey

of the greater portion of the line, and superintended the actual

construction. When the line became merged in the Grand Trunk he resigned

his position of Chief Engineer, and received the most gratifying written

testimonials from the Board of Directors as to his able administration

of the important duties which had fallen to his share. Having formed a

partnership with the present Sir Alexander T. Galt, the late Hon. Luther

H. Holton, and the Hon. D. L. Macpherson, Mr. Gzowski for some years

devoted himself entirely to the work of railway construction. On the

24th of March, 1853, the firm of Gzowski & Co. obtained the contract for

the construction of the line from Toronto westward to Sarnia. This great

work was prosecuted to a successful conclusion, and was attended with

most gratifying pecuniary results to the contractors. The firm was then

dissolved, and has since consisted of Messrs. Gzowski and Macpherson

only, who continued to carry on large operations in the way of railway

construction. Among other railway works constructed by the firm were the

line from Port Huron to Detroit, in the State of Michigan, and the line

from London to St. Mary's, in this Province. In connection with their

own enterprises, and for the purpose of supplying railway companies with

iron rails and materials used in the construction of railways, Messrs.

Gzowski & Macpherson in 1857 established the Toronto Rolling Mills,

which were carried on successfully for about twelve years. Steel rails

having largely superseded the use of iron ones, the necessity for

maintaining the establishment ceased to exist, and the works were closed

up in 1869.

The excitement produced on two continents in 1861 by the Trent affair,

and the threatened rupture of amicable relations between Great Britain

and the United States, led Mr. Gzowski to reflect seriously on the

defenceless condition of Canada. In the event of hostilities between the

two nations, this country would of course be the first point of attack;

and, in the absence of any efficient means of defence, it would

manifestly be impossible to maintain a frontier extending over thousands

of miles. It occurred to Mr. Gzowski that the establishment of a large

arsenal in Canadian territory, where every description of armament and

ammunition might be manufactured or repaired, would be a very wise

precaution. He counted the cost, prepared elaborate plans, and even

fixed upon what he believed to be the most appropriate site. Full of

this scheme, he proceeded to England, where he submitted it to the War

Secretary and other prominent members of the Imperial Government. Its

liberality created much surprise among all to whom it was broached, for

Mr. Gzowski proposed to provide capital for the construction and

equipment of the entire establishment, subject to certain very

reasonable stipulations. The project was taken into careful

consideration by the Government, and for some time it seemed not

unlikely to be carried out. It was finally concluded, however, that for

certain diplomatic reasons, it would be undesirable to proceed with it;

but full justice was done to Mr. Gzowski's unbounded liberality and

public spirit, and he was assured that the Government were not

insensible to the munificence of his proposal. From this time forward he

began to interest himself in military matters. He took a very active