506 REVIEWS — THE HAND-BOOK OF TORONTO. 



perty valued by the assessors of that year at de7j288,150, besides 

 City corporation property estimated at ^4!30,418, and personal pro- 

 perty valued at ^1,296,616. Many interesting glimpses of the ups 

 and downs of our Canadian Capital fill up the interval between its 

 birth in 1793 and this recent stage of its growth in 1857. 



Passing on, for example, to 1811, we find the clearing widening^ 

 roads extending, and houses multiplying; though the farmers com- 

 plained still of the stumps, and swamps, and pitfalls through which 

 they had to thread their way to the infant capital. Two actual hrick 

 houses are even on record prior to 1812, when war broke out. But in 

 the following year the defenceless town was taken, the public buildings 

 were burnt, and the fire-engine carried off as atrophy of such gallant 

 deeds. This somewhat curious war-trophy, commemorative of the 

 heroes who, on the 13th of October, 1813, fired the poor little village 

 and ran away with its only fire-engine, is, it seems, "now kept by 

 the United States Grovernment in the Navy fard." Our author 

 thinks that the President of the United States should be respectfully 

 requested to return the engine ; but it is surely unreasonable to 

 expect him to part with so glorious a prize. 



The following extract will give an idea of our author's more ambi- 

 tious style, when he escapes beyond the plodding details of statistics 

 into the regions of poetical fancy, toned down with a dash of severe 

 critical refiection. His subject is : 



OUR SOCIAL STATE. 



" It is perhaps as "well to admit at the outset, that there is felt now and again the 

 slightest possible deficiency in that geniality of disposition and temperament, — 

 that hearty cordiality of manner, — which some older communities manifest. It is 

 in point of fact often broadly stated that the people of Toronto are not by any 

 means so social as they might be ; with them the enjoyment of the social affec- 

 tions, that 



' Mysterious Cement of the soul,' 



is cramped by formality and chilled by etiquette, and, even at its best estate, is 

 Tery exclusive. We admit that, to the casual observer, this may be the case, and 

 first impressions are not at all times easily erased, but that apparently ungenial 

 temperament is undoubtedly the result of deeper and moi-e sacred mental com- 

 munings than those to which it is generally attributed. It may justly be ascribed, 

 less to any inherent or acquired snobbishness of feeling which makes some men 

 think that they are something 



' Above the common level of their kind,' 

 than to the fact that our population is not only but of yesterday, — it is also very 

 fluctuating. True, genuine, perennial sociality is a plant of slow growth, and caa 



