150 CANADIAN LOCAL HISTORY. 



Tvill have destroyed some. Winds, fires and floods will have removed others. The rest will be 

 deliberately taken ont of the way, or obliterated in the execution of modern improvements, the 

 obsolete and fragile gi'^ing way before the commodions and more enduring. At St. Petersburg, 

 we believe, the original log-hut of Peter the Great is preserved to the present day in a casing of 

 stone, with a kind of religious reverence. And in Rome of old, through the influence of a simi- 

 lar sacred regard for the past, the lowly cottage of Romulus was long protected in a similar 

 manner. There are probably no material relics of our founders and forefathers which we should 

 care to invest with a lilie forced and artificial permanence. But the memory of those relics, and 

 of such associations as may here and there be found to cluster around them, we may think it 

 worth our wliile to collect and cherish. 



Overlooking the harbpur, far down in the east, there stands, at the present day, a large struc- 

 ture of gray cut-stone. Its radiating wings, the turret placed at a central point aloft, evidently 

 for the ready oversight of the surrounding premises ; the unornamented blank walls, pierced 

 high up in each storey with a row of circular-headed openings, suggestive of shadowy corridors 

 and cells within, all help to give to this pile an unmistakealile prison-aspect. 



It was very nearly on the site of this rather hard-featured building that the first Houses of 

 Parliament of Upper Canada were placed — hnmUe but commodious structures of wood, built 

 before the close of the eighteenth century, and destroyed by the incendiary torch of the invader 

 in 1S13. " They consisted," as a public letter addressed by the Rev. Dr. Strachan to ex-Presi- 

 dent Jefferson sets forth, " of two elegant Halls, with convenient ofiSces, for the accommodation 

 of the Legislature and of the Courts of Justice." — " The library and all the papers and records 

 belonging to these institutions were consumed "—the same document continues — " and, at the 

 same time, the Church was robbed, and the Town Library totally pillaged." — The injuries thus 

 inflicted were a few months afterwards avenged by the destruction of the Public Buildings at 

 Washington, by a British force. "We consider" — says an Addi-ess of the Legislative Council 

 of Lower Canada to Sir George Provost in 1815 — "we consider the destruction of the Public 

 Biiildings at Wasliington as a just retribution for the outrages committed by an American force 

 at the Seat of Government of Upper Canada." 



On the same site, succeeded the more conspicuous and more cajiaeious, but still plain and 

 simply cubical brick block erected for Legislative purposes in 1818, and accidentally burned in 

 1824. Tlie conflagration on this occasion entailed a loss of £2,000, which the Canadian Mevieiu 

 of the period, published at Montreal, observes, "in the present state of the finances and debt 

 of the Province, cannot be considered as a trifling aifair." The buildings were not ensured. 

 Because they were isolated, and their external waUs of incombustible material, it was imagined 

 that the risk from fire was small, overlooking the numerous chances of ignition from within. 



It was manifestly expected that hereabout was to be the Westminster of the new capital. 

 It is not improbable that the position at the head, rather than at the entrance of the harbour, 

 was considered eligible as being at once commanding and secure. The appearance of the spot 

 in its primaeval condition was doubtless more prepossessing than we can now conceive it ever 

 to have been. Fine groves of forest trees may have given it a sheltered look, and, at the same 

 time, have screened off from the view the adjoining swamps. The language of the early Pro- 

 vincial Gazetteer, published by authority, is as follows : " The Don emjjties itself into the har- 

 bour a little above the Town, running through a marsh, which, when di-ained, wUl afford most 

 beautiful and fruitful meadows." In the early Plans, the same sanguine opinion is recorded, in 

 regard to the morasses in this locality. On one, of 1810, now before us, we have the inscrip- 

 tion : "Natural Meadow which may be mown." On another the legend nms "Large Marsh, 

 and win in time make good Meadows." On a third it is " Large Marsh, and Good Grass." — At 

 all events, hereabout it was that York, capital of Upper Canada, begSn to rise. To the west 

 and north of the site of the Houses of Parliament, the ofiicials of the Government, with mer- 

 chants and tradesmen, in the usual variety, began to select lots and put up convenient dwell- 

 ings ; whilst close by, at Berkeley Street, or Parliament Street as the southern portion of 

 Berkeley Street was then named, the chief thoroughfare of the Town had its commenciug-point. 

 Growing slowly westward from here. King Street developed in its course, in the customary 

 American way, its hotel, its tavern, its boarding-house, its waggon factory, its- tin-smith's shop, 

 its bakery, its general stores, its lawyer's offices, its printing office, its places of worship. 



