YONGE STREET AND DUNDAS STREET; 631 



to the capita] of tlie Upper Province." It may excite a smile to find 

 York styled a "city" in 1799 : but tlie terms of the passage shew, 

 as I have said, that the whole of the highway from the west to the 

 east, passing through York, was regarded as Dundas Street. That, 

 in fact, was the name long borne by our present Queen Street here 

 in Toronto ; and Queen Street, as everyone knows, is in a right line 

 with the " Kingston road," which was, as we see, simply the pro- 

 longation of Dundas Street, the great provincial highway, or Grand 

 Trunk, as it were, of the day, leading to Montreal and Quebec. It 

 is scarcely necessary to observe that the distinction and celebrity of 

 both Dundas Street and Yonge Street, taken in the original extended 

 meaning of their names, have been eclipsed in these days by the 

 greater glory and the greater convenience of the Grand Trunk, Great 

 Western, and Northern Railways of Canada. Highways, like men,, 

 have their vicissitudes. 



Hinc, apicem, rapax 

 Fortuna, cum stridore acuto, 

 Sustulit ; hie possuiese gaudet. 



Travel and traffic having been in this way largely turned aside 

 from our two primitive historic " streets," they have both of them 

 dropped, in some measure, out of the knowledge of tourists, and even 

 out of the knowledge of many among the younger portion of our 

 settled inhabitants. 



Besides Dundas Street, another permanent memorial of Henry 

 Dundas was established in Canada, in the name of a county toward 

 the eastern limit of the present Province of Ontario. The County of 

 Dundas is united with the Counties of Stormont and Glengai'ry, with 

 the well-known borough of Cornwall for county-tovm conjointly.* 



But to return : — In 1801 Pitt resigned the premiership, not being 

 able to induce the King to assent to the enfranchisement of the 

 Roman Catholics, a measure which had been vii'tually promised when 

 the legislative union of Ireland and Great Britain was efiected. 

 Dundas retired with him, but was raised to the peerage in the 

 following year, by the Addington Ministry, as Yiscount Melville, of. 

 Melville Castle, in the County of Edinburgh, and Baron Dunira, of 



* For this portion of Canada a local historian has happily appeared. Mr. James Croill, of 

 Archerfleld, in 1S61, published at Montreal an elaborate and interesting volume of 350 pages, 

 bearing the following title : " Dundas, or a Sketch of Canadian History, and more particularly 

 of the County of Dundas, one of the earliest settled counties in Upper Canada." It is dedi- 

 cated to ' ' the descendants of the United Empire Loyalists residing in the United Counties of 

 Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, formerly the Old Eastern District." 

 2 



