THE CANADIAN JOURNAL. 



NEW SERIES. 



No. LXXXV.— APRIL, 1874. 



LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED: 



BEING A REVIEW OF SOME HISTORICAL AUTOGRAPHS. 



BY HENRY SCADDING, D.D. 



I find in my portfolios and other receptacles of loose miscellaneous 

 matter a considerable accumulation of manuscrij^t documents of more 

 or less public interest. Some of them are throughout in the hand- 

 writing of men of eminence, while others bear their signatures only, 

 having been composed, or transcribed, or filled up, by a secretary or 

 other functionary. I have thought that I might in some degree 

 utilize these papers by citing pages from them, as nearly as may be 

 in chronological order, and exhibiting the originals whenever the 

 intrinsic interest of the document or other circumstances seemed to 

 make it worth while to do so. In this way, I suppose, I may make 

 my collections help forward the study among us of civil and literary 

 history. 



Autogi'aph documents sometimes enable us to realize to ourselves 

 a historical character in a cuiious manner. The statesman, the 

 business man, the literary man, each reveals himself with an extra 

 clearness in his manuscripts. Should the paper before us chance to 

 be a first sketch or rough draft, we discover which were the writer's 

 first thoughts and which were his second, what he deemed it politic 

 to add under the circumstances, and what to suppress ; while in the 

 handwriting itself we have not only a clue to general character and 



* The first of these paper's was read before tlje Canadian Institute, January 10, 1874, as the 

 President's Address for the Session of 1873-1 

 1 



