TORONTO: AN HISTORICAL SKETCH 
drive and promenade which was planned by Simcoe 
and which might be made as beautiful as the English 
garden at Geneva. When the plans of the Harbour 
Commission have been carried out Toronto will have 
achieved its destiny and secured the most beautiful 
and most valuable lakefront in America. And as 
the Duke of Brunswick gave a model theatre to the 
Swiss city of his adoption, so a native Torontonian 
has built the Alexandra Theatre in addition to start- 
ing the subscription for the new hospital. The Car- 
negie Library on St. George and College Streets is as 
perfect a model in its way as St. Andrew in partibus 
himself. The reading-room is unexcelled. The col- 
lection of paintings and sketches and photographs to 
illustrate the early history of Toronto is in the eastern 
gallery of the building, and is a permanent monument 
to the historic flair, the civic patriotism and public- 
spirited munificence of Mr. John Ross Robertson. 
It is also the best appendix to the present article, 
every page of which is indebted to Robertson’s 
“Tandmarks of Toronto” (5 vols. Toronto, 1894- 
1908). 
The Public Library is also the centre for the 
exhibitions of the Canadian Academy of Art, the 
Ontario Society of Artists, and the Art Club.  Lit- 
erature is united with art in the work of the Arts 
and Letters Club, the Round Table, and the Strolling 
Players, the last being rather social than scientific. 
Among purely social clubs the old-established down- 
town Toronto Club, on the corner of York and Wel- 
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