CANADIAN NOMS-DE-PLUME IDENTIFIED. 269 



BritisB. North America. There is, there must be, a lingering frag- 

 ment of shame about the man after all. It is a redeeming feature 

 in Kossuth's character that he lacked assurance to preach to a free 

 people, like the subjects of Queen Victoria, about freedom, after 

 coming from the land of bondage, redolent with the foul kisses of the 

 tyrant, and gorged with money earned by the toil of the slave." 



This Solomon, under another guise, edited the Anglo-American 

 Magazine, a valuable periodical published for several years in Toronto 

 by Mr. Maclear. One conspicuotis feature of this monthly was a 

 department in which, after the pattern of Blackwood of old, a group 

 of friends discuss matters in a free and familiar manner. The per- 

 sonage who figures as the editor in these " Sederunts," as they are 

 called, is " Culpepper Crabtree, Esq.," major in the militia, at whose 

 shanty events and books are made to pass under review ; the other 

 interlocutors are the Doctor, the Laird, the Squireen, and Mrs. 

 Grundy. The shantyitself is on the banks of the Humber. It is 

 thus spoken of : " On a gentle slope, some four miles to the west- 

 ward of the 'Muddy clearing,' as Solomon of Streetsville delighteth 

 to call our city, i.e., Toronto, may be seen one of those primitive 

 fabrics, yclept in Cannuckian vernacular a 'shanty.'" It is further 

 described. The conversation then proceeds in a natural, chatty way, 

 with a plentiful intermixture of anecdote and humour. Thus in the 

 year of the Duke of Wellington's death (1852), we have : — 



" Laird. — Ha'e ye read, Crabtree, the vidimus which the Times 

 gives of the great Duke's life and character 1 



Major. — I have, and with unmixed enjoyment. It is one of the 

 most masterly essays which has graced the periodical press for many 

 a long day, far siirpassing, in my humble opinion, the highest flights 

 of that showy but intensely superficial writer, Thomas Babington 

 Macaulay. 



Laird. — You are a thocht too hard on Tummus, Major. His 

 sangs o' auld Rome rouse my blood like the blast o' a border 

 trumpet. 



Major. — -By your leave. Laird, you are creating a man of straw 

 for the mere purpose of demolishing your handicraft. I said nothing 

 against Macaulay as a poet, but merely demurred to his pretensions 

 as a historian. 



Doctor. — The less a fossil such as you are, Crabtree, says respect- 

 ing a "Whig historian, the better. You know that I, as a Whig, can 



