TORONTO OP OLD. 245 



he was appointed Attorney-General for the Island of Cape Breton, from which post, after twelve 

 years, he was promoted to a Judgeship in Upper Canada. Tliis was in 1811. Thirteen years 

 afterwards (in 182.5) he became Chief Justice. The funeral of Sir William Campbell, in 1834, was 

 one of unusual impressiveness. The Legislature was in session at the time, and attended in' a 

 body, with the Bar and the Judges. At the same hour, within the walls of the same Church, 

 St. James's, the obsequies of a member of the Lower House took place, namely, of Mr. EosweU 

 Mount, representative of tlie County of Middlesex, who had chanced to die at York during the 

 session. A funeral oration on the two-fold occasion was pronounced by Archdeacon Strachan. — 

 Dr. Henry, author of " Trifles from my Portfolio," attended Sir William Campbell, in his last 

 illness. In the work just named, his case is thus described : " My worthy patient became very 

 weak towards the end of the year," the doctor says, " his nights were restless — his appetite 

 began to faU, and he could only relish tit bits. Medicine was tried fruitlessly, so his Doctor 

 prescribed snipes. At the point of the sandy peninsula opposite the barracks," Dr. Henry con- 

 tinues, " are a number of little pools and marshes, frequented by these delectable little birds ; 

 and here I used to cross over in my skiff and pick up the Chief Justice's panacea. On this 

 delicate food tlie poor old gentleman was supported for a couple of months : but the frost set 

 in — the snipes flew away, and Sir William dieo." (ii. 112.) Appended to the account of the 

 imposing ceremonies, in the York Courier of the day, we notice one of those familiar paragraphs 

 which sensational itemists like to construct and which stimulate the self-complacency of small 

 communities. It is headed Longevity, and then thus proceeds : " At the funeral of the late 

 Sir W. Campbell, on Monday, there were twenty inhabitants of York, whose united ages exceed 

 fourteen hundred and fifty years ! " 



It is certain that there were to be seen moving up tbe aisles .of the old wooden St. James's, 

 at York, every Sunday, a striking number of venerable and dignified forms. For one thing, 

 tlieir costume helped to render them picturesque and interesting. The person of our imme- 

 diate ancestors was well set oflF by their dress. Recall their easy, partially cut-away black 

 eoats and upright collars ; their so-called small-clothes and buckled shoes ; the frilled shirt- 

 tiosoms and white cravats, not apologies for cravats, but real envelopes for the neck. The 

 comfortable well-to-do Quaker of the old school still exhibits in use some of their homely 

 peculiarities of garb. And then remember the cut and arrangement of their hair, generally 

 mUky white, either from age or by the aid of powder ; their smoothly shaven cheek and chin ; 

 and the peculiar expression superinduced in the eye and the whole countenance, by the govern- 

 ing ideas of the period, ideas that we are wont to style old-fashioned, but which furnished, 

 nevertheless, for the time being, very useful and definite rules of conduct. Two pictures, one, 

 Trumbull's Signing of the Declaration of Independence ; the other, Huntingdon's Kepublican 

 Court of Washington (shewn in Paris in 186Y), exhibit to the eye the oiitward and visible pre- 

 sentment of the prominent actors in the affairs of the central portion of this Northern Continent, 

 a century ago. These paintings do the same, in some degree, for us here in the north, also ; 

 any one of the more conspicuous figures in the congregation of the old St. James's, at York, 

 might have stepped out from the canvas of one or other of the delineations just named. On 

 occasions of state, even the silken bag. (in the case of officials at least) was attached to the nape 

 of tlie neck, as though, in accordance with a fashion of an earlier day still, the hair were yet 

 ■worn long, and required gathering up in a receptacle provided for tlie purpose. — It seems now 

 almost like a dream that we have seen in the flesh the honoured patriarchs and founders of our 

 ■now great community thus assembled together in antique guise— 

 "Zarah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot, 

 The youthful world's gray fatliers in one knot "— 

 that our eyes have really beheld the traces left upon their countenances by their long and 

 varied experiences, by their cares, and processes of thought ; the traces left on them by the 

 lapse of years, by rough and troublous times, not merely heard of by the hearing of the ear, as 

 existing across the Lakes or across the Seas, but as encountered m their own persons, in their 

 own land, at their own hearths ; encountered and bravely struggled tlirough ; that we have been 

 eye-witnesses of their cheeriness and good heart after crisis upon crisis had come upon them; 

 eye-witnesses of their devotedness to duty, the duty that presented itself, as each successive 

 emergency arose : accomplishing their work honestly and well according to their knowledge 

 and beliefs, without realizing in many an instance probably, the reach and vastnegs of the great 



