TORONTO OP OLD. 167 



female acquaintance commenting with a spiteful or a sprightly levity on the delinquencies and 

 mistakes of their sex, I have only said to myself, 'They know not what they do.'" "Here, 

 then," the Preface referred to thus concludes, "I present to women a little elementary manual 

 or introduction to that knowledge of woman, in which they may learn to understand better 

 their own nature ; to judge more justly, more gently, more truly of each other, 

 .'And m the silent hour of inward thought 

 To still suspect, yet still revere themselves 

 In lowliness of heart.' " 



Mrs. Jameson was unattractive in person at first sight, although, as could scarcely fail to he 

 the case in one so higlily endowed, her features, separately considered, were fine and boldly 

 marked. Intellectually, she was an enchantress. Besides an originality and independence of 

 judgment on most subjects, and a facility in generalizing and reducing thought to the form of 

 a neat aphorism, she had a strong and capacious memory, richly furnished with choice things. 

 Her conversation was consequently of the most fascinating kind. She sang, too, in sweet 

 taste, with a quiet softness, without display. She sketched from nature with great elegance, 

 and designed cleverly. The seven or eight ..illustrations which appear in the American edition 

 of the "Characteristics," dated at Toronto, are etched by herself, and bear her autograph, 

 "Anna." The same is to be observed of the illustrations in the English edition of her " Com- 

 monplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies ;" and in her larger volumes on various 

 Art-subjects. She had supereminently beautiful hands, which she always scrupulously guarded 

 from contact with the outer air. Mrs. Jameson was a connoisseur in "hands," as we gather 

 from her Commonplace Book, just mentioned. She there says: "There are hands of various 

 character ; the hand to catch, and the hand to hold ; the hand to clasp, and the hand to grasp ; 

 the hand that has worked, or could work, and the hand that has never done anything but hold 

 itself out to be kissed, like that of Joanna of Arragon in Raphael's picture." Her own appeared 

 to belong to the last-named class. Though the merest trifles, we may record here one or two 

 further personal recollections of Mrs. Jameson ; of her appreciation, for example, of a very 

 obvious quotation from Horace, to be appended to a little sketch of her own, representing a 

 child asleep, but in danger from a serpent near ; and of her glad acceptance of an out-of-the-way 

 scrap from the " Vanity of Arts and Sciences " of Cornelius Agrippa, which proved the antiquity 

 of charivaries. "Do you not know that the intervention of a lady's hand is often requisite to 

 the finish of a young man's education ?" was a suggestive question drawn forth by some youthful 

 maladroitness. Another characteristic dictum, " Society is one vast masquerade of manners," 

 is remembered, as having been probably at the time a new idea to ourselves in particular. The 

 irrational conventionalities of society she persistently sought to counteract, by her words on 

 suitable occasions, and by her example, especially in point of dress, which did not strictly 

 conform to the customs in vogue. — Among the local characters relished by her in Canada was 

 Mr. Justice Hagerman, who united in himself some of the bluntness of Johnson with the phy- 

 sique of Charles James Fox. She set a high value on his talents, althou.gh we have heard her, 

 at once playfully and graphically, speak of him as " that great mastiff, Hagerman." From Mrs. 

 Jameson we learned that "Gaytay" was a sufficient approximation in English to the pronun- 

 ciation of "Goethe." She had been intimately acquainted with the poet at "Weimar. — In the 

 Kensington Museum there is a bust, exceedingly fine, of Mrs. Jameson, by the celebrated sculp- 

 tor Gibson, executed by him, as the inscription speaks, "in her honour." The head and coun- 

 tenance are of course somewhat idealized ; but the likeness is well retained. In the small 

 Boston edition of the " Legends of the Madonna " there is an Interesting portrait of Mrs. Jame- 

 son, gi^ang her appearance when far advanced in years. 



Westward from the house and grounds whose associations have detained us so long, the space 

 that was known as the Government Common is now traversed from south to north by two 

 streets. Their names possess some interest, the first of them being that of the Duke of Port- 

 land, Viceroy of Ireland, Colonial Secretary, and three times Prune Minister in the reign of 

 George the Third ; the other that of Earl Bathurst, Secretary for the Colonies in George the 

 Fourth's time. 



Eastward of Bathurst Street, in the direction of the military burying-ground, there was long 

 marked out by a furrow in the sward the ground-plan of a church. In 1830, the military chap- 



