64 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



prise. Even now, it is more interesting; and readable than Beamish 

 Murdoch's vuhiable summary of provincial archives and rare books, or 

 the latest history written in 1892 by a Mr. Duncan Campbell, a Scotch- 

 man by birth and education, who had been only a few years in the 

 country when he ventured to write a history which has never risen 

 be3-ond the level of ordinary contributions to newspapers. 



The Judge's books should assuredly find a place on the shelves of 

 every public library in the Dominion '. One of his sons has been recently 

 elevated to the peerage of England on account of his usefulness as a 

 member of the staff of the war office, but he does not apjoear to have 

 made any venture into the world of literature where his father has made 

 a permanent name. Another son, who in his early manhood had some 

 literary aspirations, has disappeared from public view - perhaps lost in 

 those mysterious Pleiades wliere he passed in imagination so many of his 

 brightest 3'ears, in an endeavour to connect " the sweet influence " of 

 those seven stars with the holding of "festivals of the dead" — All 

 Halloween, All Saints, All Souls, etc.— among many peoples from 

 immemorial times. To prove the unity of the origin of the human race 

 by the universality of certain superstitions, he did not consider the 

 human, and very comforting act of sneezing beneath elaborate comment 

 in learned treatises which, though necessarily confined to a very limited 

 cliiss of readers, showed much evidence of thought and learning which, 

 profitably and perseveringly directed, might have enabled him to realize 

 the promise of his youth. 



In connection with these brief references to the literary labours of 

 Judge Haliburton, mention may be made of an interesting fact, not 

 generall}' known, which is one example of many that might be adduced 

 to bhow that the historian and humourist Avas always alive to the material 

 interests of his province. Indeed the second volume of his history, and 

 the frequent references in his humorous books to the stagnant industries 

 and the absence of a spirit of enterprise in his native provinces, show that 

 he had a very practical side to his character. The fact to which I allude 

 is the part he took in initiating steam navigation across the Atlantic in 

 connection with Mr. Howe, of whom he was always a warm friend, 

 though their views on political questions as the years passed by were not 



• Kor a correct bibliogniphy of the .Judge's writings see one by J. Parker 

 Ancierson of the Urilish Museum in " Haliburton, a centenary chaplet, printed for 

 the Halib\irlon Club, King's College, Windsor. N.S., at Toronto, 1WI7." 



A complete set of the llrst editions of the Judge's books are now difficult to 

 purchase in London, where they were all published, and is worth about sixty 

 dollars at the very least. His history is frccpiently ofFercd in catalogues of old 

 books from live to eight dollars, according to its condition. It contains a map and 

 several illustrations, one of which, the province building, is given on page 74 of 

 this book. 



An excellent criticism of " Halilmrton : the man and the writer" has been 

 written by F. Blake Crofton (King's College, Windsor, Haliburton series, 1889). 



