XXVIII ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



to his pages for that fascination wliich all of us find in the books of 

 Francis Parkman, whose deep love for nature and power of description 

 enabled him to invest the story of the pa>t with singular charm. Dr. 

 Kingsfurd's work is, on the whole, a fair dispassionate review of the two 

 great periods of Canadian history, extending from the foundation of 

 Quebec by Champlain down to the union of the Canadas in 1841. That 

 bias or feeling or prejudice, which too often, in personal intercourse, 

 were apt to obscure his judgment of contemporary events and persons, 

 appears to have yielded to a spirit of true, honest criticism when he took 

 his pen in hand and recalled calmly and judicially the incidents of the 

 two hundred and forty years which were embraced in his bulky history. 

 His accounts of the w'ar of 1812-1814 and of the risings in Upper and 

 Lower Canada in 1837 and 1838 are on the whole dispassionate reviews 

 of events which have been too often described from the point of view of 

 the mere partisan or sentimental politician who believes that because 

 grievances remain long without redress rioting, confusion and rebellion 

 are justifiable under all conditions. Dr. Kingsford, we may here add, 

 was by birth an Englishman who came to Canada in an English regiment 

 when he had just attained manhood, and subsequently embraced the 

 profession of civil engineering, in which he attained some distinction. 

 Like so many other eminent men who were not born or educated in 

 Canada — notably W. Lyon MacKeuzie, iVlexander Mackenzie, Lord 

 Strathcona, Sir Sandford Fleming — he became Canadian in thought 

 and aspiration from the moment he decided to make his home in Canada, 

 to whose instructive history he devoted so many years of his declining 

 and not always fortunate life. 



It is pleasant for all of us to hear that a benefactor of a great Cana- 

 dian university, now that the aged historian has at last found that rest 

 which he could never reach in the hurly-burly of life, has shown his 

 appreciation of the historian's services by founding a chair of history 

 associated with his name, and at the same time by showing generous 

 consideration to one near and dear to the aged writer. Perhaps it may 

 be some encouragement to the student, patiently and industriously 

 delving into the records of the past, or to the poet weaving sweet 

 measures of rhyme full of inspiring thoughts, to know that when they 

 have gone to their long sleep their countiymen and countrywomen will 

 remember them at last and pay them th!at honour and give them that 

 fame which was never accorded them in their struggling lives. Yet even 

 if this be so, it would be well for all of us to endeavour to raise ourselves 

 above the material thoughts and selfishness of the present, and help by 

 words of sympathy or acts of practical kindness the men and women who 



