TOKONTO: AN HISTOKICAL SKETCH 



spacious church edifices adorn the city, which is as 

 renowned for its congregations and preachers as for 

 its churches. 



To the archaeologist and the lover of local his- 

 tory the most interesting fane in Toronto is the 

 " Holy Trinity," overshadowed, like its namesake in 

 New York, by the stupendous erections of modern 

 commercialism. For here, in the parish rectory 

 on the little square, lived and wrought and wrote the 

 late Dr. Henry Scadding, author of " Toronto of 

 Old," and one of the most reverend figures in the 

 early history of the city. In this place, too, wor- 

 shipped the Earl of Elgin, coming from his govern- 

 mental residence in Elmsley Villa, afterwards the 

 seat of Knox College, and now the site of the Central 

 Presbyterian Church. Another name connected with 

 Holy Trinity is that of Bishop Selwyn, of New Zea- 

 land, the famous missionary, whose preaching in the 

 church, as well as that of Scoresby, the Arctic navi- 

 gator, Dr. Scadding duly records.* Its own per- 

 petuation as a down-town mission is ensured by the 

 bequest of its founders, two English sisters. Little 1846 

 did these ladies, or the rector who chronicled their 

 pious gift, imagine that before another generation 

 had passed the sylvan parish church which they 

 remembered would be surrounded, like a boulder at 



* Half a century before, General Simcoe, the founder of 

 Toronto, had set up the tent of Captain Cook, the circum- 

 navigator and explorer of Polynesia, near the foot of John 

 Street as his summer residence. 



3 33 



