The effect of seeing this sentimental effusion in the pages of a respectable magazine is remembered as among the most intoxicating of my first emotions. Another, and another, of the Byronian or Camoens fashion followed, till I began to wonder why things so well worthy of insertion were worth no pay. Then I took to prose, and wrote essays in the line of "Elia and Geoffry Crayon," though I was not sufficiently conscious that the line was a very long one, and that my models were at one end of it, I at the other. Still I was not beneath the favour of unremunerated admission. Like Knowles's " Julian St. Pierre," "I paid me with the pleasure of the task, nor asked the hire." If, however, poetry and essay were confined to mere amateur indulgence, other occasions for my pen were not so unsubstantially remunerative. I have alluded to the literary employment which at one time afforded me at least assistant means; and I, at all events, was practising myself in that which has since, in spite of its weakness and deficiency, proved, on occasion, a moderately productive

source.

The literary excitement of this period has no parallel in the present day, but this remark rather refers to the exciting character of the works produced than to their substantial superiority. Macaulay and Dickens are the only men who may be said to retain any of the popular mania which was then excited for any new production by Byron, Moore, Scott, and others, who appealed at once to the common feelings of the people at large. The essays, too, of Lamb and Washington Irving, and the startling strength of the dramatist, Knowles, had their share in promoting an impatient thirst for works that addressed the sensibilities of the readily susceptible. Wordsworth and Coleridge had not yet wrought upon the popular judgment that gentle revolution which is now admitted as having its foundation in truth, however imperfect in its fulness. Child-like simplicity and metaphysical subtlety were distasteful to readers, who loved to be carried away by the tide of passion, stirring narrative, and picturesque or romantic character. The only cause which prevented a more lasting deluge of the outpouring flood of such a tide, was the unapproachable excellence of its great promoters, whose substantial merits have "lived down" the unsubstantial qualities of their imitators, and left the latter to be absorbed in oblivion.

As I have before said, it was Shakspeare who saved at least a few of us from falling into the current of the day, and preserved to us those perceptions of the healthful and staminal, which have since, I trust, been cultivated to the promotion of our happiness and moral strength. We assert no exemption from the popular yielding; but merely the retention of a particular germ of good, which has in ripening years thriven to our comfort and support.

It was soon evident to me that literature, as a means of existence, was still further from my availment than the stage; so I picked up architectural employment as I could; took up my pen as it might occasionally serve my purpose; prosecuted my professional studies when no more lucrative application could be found, and so brought myself to that period when my continental tour was resolved on.

To the preparations for this, I have already alluded in a former chapter, and it will form the succeeding portion of my narrative.

CANADIAN SKETCHES.

THE preceding sketches of Canadian life, as the reader may well suppose, are necessarily tinctured with somewhat sombre hues, imparted by the difficulties and privations with which, for so many years, the writer had to struggle; but we should be sorry should these truthful pictures of scenes and characters observed fifteen or twenty years ago, have the effect of conveying erroneous impressions of the present state of a country, which is manifestly destined, at no remote period, to be one of the most prosperous in the world. Had we merely desired to please the imagination of our readers, it would have been easy to have painted the country and the people rather as we could have wished them to be, than as they actually were, at the period to which our description refers; and, probably, what is thus lost in truthfulness, it would have gained in popularity with that class of readers who peruse books more for amusement than instruction.

When I say that Canada is destined to be one of the most prosperous countries in the world, let it not be supposed that I am influenced by any unreasonable partiality for the land of my adoption. Canada may not possess mines of gold or silver, but she possesses all those advantages of climate, geological structure, and position, which are essential to greatness and prosperity. Her long and severe winter, so disheartening to her first settlers, lays up, amidst the forests of the West, inexhaustible supplies of fertilizing moisture for the summer, while it affords the farmer the very best of natural roads to enable him to carry his wheat and other produce to market. It is a remarkable fact, that hardly a lot of land containing two hundred acres, in British America, can be found without an abundant supply of water at all seasons of the year; and a very small proportion of the land itself is naturally unfit for cultivation. To crown the whole, where can a country be pointed out which possesses such an extent of internal navigation? A chain of river navigation and navigable inland seas, which, with the canals recently constructed, gives to the countries bordering on them all the advantages of an extended sea-coast, with a greatly diminished risk of loss from shipwreck !

Little did the modern discoverers of America dream, when they called this country "Canada," from the exclamation of one of the exploring party, "Aca nada,"-"there is nothing here," as the story goes, that Canada would far outstrip those lands of gold and silver, in which their imaginations revelled, in that real wealth of which gold and silver are but the portable representatives. The interminable foreststhat most gloomy and forbidding feature in its scenery to the European stranger, should have been regarded as the most certain proof of its fertility.

The severity of the climate, and the incessant toil of clearing the land to enable the first settlers to procure the mere necessaries of life, have formed in its present inhabitants an indomitable energy of character, which, whatever may be their faults, must be regarded as a distinguishing attribute of the Canadians, in common with our neighbours of the United States. When we consider the progress of the Northern

races of mankind, it cannot be denied, that while the struggles of the hardy races of the North with their severe climate, and their forests, have gradually endowed them with an unconquerable energy of character, which has enabled them to become the masters of the world; the inhabitants of more favoured climates, where the earth almost spontaneously yields all the necessaries of life, have remained comparatively feeble and inactive, or have sunk into sloth and luxury. It is unnecessary to quote any other instances in proof of this obvious fact, than the progress of Great Britain and the United States of America, which have conquered as much by their industry as by their swords.

Our neighbours of the United States are in the habit of attributing their wonderful progress in improvements of all kinds to their republican institutions. This is no doubt quite natural in a people who have done so much for themselves in so short a time; but when we consider the subject in all its bearings, it may be more truly asserted, that, with any form of government not absolutely despotic, the progress of North America, peopled by a civilized and energetic race, with every motive to industry and enterprize in the nature of the country itself, must necessarily have been rapid. An unbounded extent of fertile soil, with an increasing population, were circumstances which of themselves were sufficient to create a strong desire for the improvement of internal communications; as, without common roads, rail-roads, or canals, the interior of the country would have been unfit to be inhabited by any but absolute barbarians. All the first settlers of America wanted was to be

left to themselves.

When we compare the progress of Great Britain with that of North America, the contrast is sufficiently striking to attract our attention. While the progress of the former has been the work of ages, North America has sprung into wealth and power almost within a period which we can remember. But the colonists of North America should recollect, when they indulge in such comparisons, that their British ancestors took many centuries to civilize themselves, before they could send free and intelligent settlers to America. The necessity for improvements in the internal communications is vastly more urgent in a widely-extended continent than in an island, no part of which is far removed from the sea-coast; and patriotism, as well as self-interest, would readily suggest such improvements to the minds of a people who inherited the knowledge of their ancestors, and were besides stimulated to extraordinary exertions by their recently-acquired independence. As the political existence of the United States commenced at a period when civilization had made great progress in the mother-country, their subsequent improvement would, for various reasons, be much more rapid than that of the country from which they originally emigrated. To show the influence of external circumstances on the characters of men, let us just suppose two individuals, equal in knowledge and natural capacity, to be placed, the one on an improved farm in England, with the necessary capital and farm-stock, and the other in the wilds of America, with no capital but his labour and the implements required to clear the land for his future farm. In which of these individuals might we reasonably expect to find the most energy, ingenuity, and general intelligence on subjects connected with their immediate interests? No one who has lived for a few years in the United States or Canada can hesitate for a reply.

The farmer in the more improved country generally follows the beaten track, the example of his ancestors, or the successful one of his more intelligent contemporaries; he is rarely compelled to draw upon his individual mental resources. Not so with the colonist. He treads in tracks but little known; he has to struggle with difficulties on all sides. Nature looks sternly on him, and in order to preserve his own existence, he must conquer Nature, as it were, by his perseverance and ingenuity. Each fresh conquest tends to increase his vigour and intelligence, until he becomes a new man, with faculties of mind which, but for his severe lessons in the school of adversity, might have lain for ever dormant.

While America presents the most forbidden aspect to the new settler, it at the same time offers the richest rewards to stimulate his industry. On the one hand, there is want and misery; on the other, abundance and prosperity. There is no middle course for the settler; he must work or starve. In North America there is another strong incentive to improvement to be found in the scarcity of labour; and still more, therefore, than in Europe must every mechanical contrivance which supersedes manual labour tend to increase the prosperity of the inhabitants. When these circumstances are duly considered, we need no longer wonder at the rapid improvements in labour-saving machinery, and in the means of internal communication throughout the United States. But for the steam engine, canals, and railroads, North America would have remained for ages a howling wilderness of endless forests, and instead of the busy hum of men, and the sound of the mill and steam-engine, we should now have heard nothing but

"The melancholy roar of unfrequented floods.”

The scenes and characters presented to the reader in the preceding pages, belong in some measure rather to the past than the present state of Canada. In the last twenty years great changes have taken place, as well in the external appearance of the country, as in the general character of its inhabitants. In many localities where the land was already under the plough, the original occupants of the soil have departed to renew their endless wars with the giants of the forest, in order to procure more land for their increasing families where it could be obtained at a cheaper price. In the back-woods, forests have been felled, the blackened stumps have disappeared, and regular furrows are formed by the ploughman, where formerly he had not time or inclination to whistle at his work. A superior class of farmers has sprung up, whose minds are as much improved by cultivation as their lands, and who are comfortably settled on farms supposed to be exhausted of their fertility by their predecessors. As the breadth of land recovered from the forest is increased, villages, towns, and cities have grown up and increased in population and wealth in proportion to the productiveness of the surrounding country.

In Canada, it is particularly to be noted, that there is hardly any intermediate stage between the rude toil and privation of the backwoods, and the civilization, comfort, and luxury of the towns and cities, many of which are to all outward appearance entirely European, with the encouraging prospect of a continual increase in the value of fixed property. When a colony capable, from the fertility of the soil and abundance of moisture, of supporting a dense population has been settled by a civilized race, they are never long in establishing a communication

with the sea-coast and with other countries. When such improvements have been effected, the inhabitants may be said at once to take their proper place among civilized nations. The elements of wealth and power are already there, and time and population only are required fully to develope the resources of the country.

Unhappily the natural progress of civilized communities in our colonies is too often obstructed by the ignorance of governments, and unwise or short-sighted legislation; and abundance of selfish men are always to be found in the colonies themselves, who, destitute of patriotism, greedily avail themselves of this ignorance, in order to promote their private interests at the expense of the community. Canada has been greatly retarded in its progress by such causes, and this will in a great measure account for its backwardness when compared with the United States, without attributing the difference to the different forms of government. It was manifestly the intention of the British government, in conferring representative institutions on Canada, that the people should enjoy all the privileges of their fellow-subjects in the mother-country. The more to assimilate our government to that of its great original, the idea was for some time entertained of creating a titled and hereditary aristocracy, but it was soon found that though

"The King can make a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, an' a' that,"

it was not in his power to give permanency to an institution which, in its origin, was as independent as royalty itself, arising naturally out of the feudal system: but which was utterly inconsistent with the genius and circumstances of a modern colony. The sovereign might endow the members of such an aristocracy with grants of the lands of the crown to support their dignity, but what benefit could such grants be, even to the recipients, in a country covered with boundless forests and nearly destitute of inhabitants? It is obvious that no tenants could be found to pay rents for such lands, or indeed even to occupy them, while lands could be purchased on easy terms in the United States, or in Canada itself. Had this plan been carried out, Canada would have been a doomed country for centuries.

The strongest incitements to industry are required, those of proprietorship and ultimate independence, to induce settlers to encounter all the privations and toil of a new settlement in such a country. A genuine aristocracy can only exist in a country already peopled, and which has been conquered and divided among the conquerors. In such a state of things, aristocracy, though artificial in its origin, becomes naturalized, if I may use the expression, and even, as in Great Britain, when restrained within proper limits, highly beneficial in advancing civilization. Be it for good or be it for evil, it is worse than useless to disguise the fact that the government of a modern colony, where every conquest is made from the forest by little at a time, must be essentially republican.

Any allusion to political parties is certainly foreign to the object of the preceding sketches; but it is impossible to make the British reader acquainted with the various circumstances which retarded the progress of this fine colony, without explaining how the patronage of the local government came formerly to be so exclusively bestowed on one class of the population, thus creating a kind of spurious aristocracy which dis