REVIEWS — THE CANADA DIRECTORY. 35 



thewl alone must Lave involved, an amount of labour and expense wliicli 

 it is difficult to perceive how the small price of so large a volume can 

 repay. But besides this, and the Canadian and States advertisementSj 

 — -which would almost require an appendix, already, to intimate what 

 effect the recent commercial crisis and American National bankruptcy 

 have had upon them, — the statement in the preface is fully borne out, 

 that, in addition to its value for the man of business, it is no exagger- 

 ation to say, it is '• a Guide-book for the man of pleasure, an Index for 

 the immigrant, and an Instructor for the settler ; a Gazeteer for the 

 student, and an Armj^-list for the militia officer ; v/hile for the states- 

 man and others connected with official life, it is a Statistical Chronicle 

 of the progress of the country in all departments of enterprise." 



The Canada Directory is announced as a periodical intended to be 

 continued each alternate jeav ; and as the time approaches when this 

 goodty octavo shall be deposed from its desk-throae, to make way for 

 its successorj we can fancy the gathering doubts with which reference 

 will be made to its ah'eady antiquated pages ; until at length we witness 

 the ungracious heartiness of its deposition : turned out of its responsi- 

 ble post of honor as unceremoniously as Paris' s old citizen-king of 

 1848, was hustled into his hackney cab, and bundled out of the king- 

 dom — kingdom no more — like so much shot rubbish. 



But there are other things besides gOod wine which improve with 

 the keeping, and develope undreamt of virtues in the sober maturity of 

 their years. We have often conned over, in by-gone days, the thin 

 'little duodecimo Directories of the antiquated Edinburgh of the 18th 

 century, compiled by the once famous Peter Williamson, who, after 

 ■spending his earlier years among the Indians of our North American 

 wilds, carried back some of the Yankee enterprise with him, and 

 set up a house of entertainment for the leg-al hangers-on of the Scottish 

 Parliament House, designating himself somev/hat mysteriously " Peter 

 Williamson, from the other world!" There he established the earliest 

 ■^^ penny post," or receiving local letter box for the General Post Office ; 

 and there too. he was the first to publish a street Directory for the 

 Scottish Metropolis : which the curious still ransack — not in vain, — 

 for evidence of the local habitation of Johnson's Bozzy, and many 

 another local and world-famous celebrity of Auld Seekie. It is to this 

 Scottish John Lovell of the eighteenth century, that the poet, Fergus- 

 son, thus alludes, in his " Rising of the Session ;" i.e. the close of the 

 Scottish legal term : — 



This vacance is a heavy doom 

 Oa ladiaa Peter's coffee-room. 



