482 MERTON COLLEGE AND CANADA. 



were his near associates in the country ; and his manner, which had 

 a semblance of austerity, was against him. His time of life, too, 

 when in Canada, was against him, the flexibility and sympathetic 

 temper of youth having, in appearance, departed. He was, as I sup- 

 pose, a student to the last. I remember the aspect of a small library 

 of books which accompanied him to Toronto. It was a dingy-looking, 

 ragged regiment of volumes, each tome shewing a large number of 

 markers or slips of paper between the leaves, indicating passages at 

 which the reader thought he should like sometime to look again. I 

 had a great desire, I remember, to examine this collection. 



That Sir Edm.und Head was no neophyte in the modern school of 

 enlightened Englishmen, we have already seen. The sentences which 

 T shall now read, containing opinions of his on the subject of educa- 

 tion in general and of Canadian education in particular, are taken 

 from a speech delivered by him at the placing of the cope-stone on 

 the turret of the Great ToAver of the University Building, at Toronto, 

 on the fourth of October, 1858. The report of the speech would, I 

 think, have been the better for revision. The stenographer seems 

 not to have caught the sense in every minute particular. One or 

 two phraseological changes have accordingly been made. (For a full 

 account, see the Journal of Education, xi., 1G3. It may be noted 

 that the foundation-stone of the building had been laid exactly two 

 years previously, without any public ceremony ; and that one year 

 later, namely in 1859, the professors v/ere vigorously at work in their 

 respective lecture-rooms). 



It was in response to a toast at the lunch which followed the 

 ceremony of October 4th, 1858, that Sir Edmimd Head spoke. 

 He said: "I shall long remember the kind manner in which the 

 Vice-Chancellor has been pleased to speak of my services in connexion 

 with the University. It is, however, my duty to tell him, and to 

 tell you, gentlemen, that he has greatly overrated those services." 

 (The Yice-Chancellor, Mr. Langton, in a preceding speech, had said 

 that "from the smallest details to the most important matters. Sir 

 Edmu.nd had exhibited an interest in the building ; and had it not 

 been for him, he believed it wovdd never have been built.") Sir 

 Edmund then proceeded : " The good sense of the people of this 

 country acknowledged the necessity for such a University and the 

 advantages of the education to be afforded by it ; and I have acted 

 only in the discharge of my duty in doing what I have been enabled 



