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"There was," says the Bishop's biographer, paired from the Choral Service of King's

"an undisguised jealousy of its connection with the Church ;" and it may be doubted if the steps which were taken were calculated to allay such jealousy.

Bishop Bethune, in detailing all the gratifying incidents of the Triennial Episcopal Visitation, only four years later: the Bishop's impressive address, his earnestness and practical manner of exhibiting "the Church as a bulwark against heresy and schism," and "the readiness with which Dissenters cast off all regard for the forms and usages of the Church of the Apostles ;"--closes with an enthusiastic description of the special choral services in the Chapel of the University of King's College, with its "plaintive tone of sacred song, conducted by the rule of the ancient chants," and "the AMEN of the choristers and people, following the dirge-like petitions of the minister," at the close of which the clergy repaired to the episcopal residence, or "Palace," as it was customarily called. The plain, substantial red brick dwelling aspired to no palatial magnificence; but the old Bishop used to repeat, good-humouredly, the exclamation of his brother, who made his way from Aberdeen to the episcopal mansion; and, lost in wonder at his brother's good fortune, exclaimed in homely vernacular: "Eh! Jock! is a' this honestly come by ?" The associations of that deserted mansion are replete with memories of genial hospitality, wit, and kindly humour to many. The host was full of anecdote about the events and characters of early Canadian history; and the guest who sat down for the first time at the Bishop's table, was surprised to find that the uncompromising antagonist of every ecclesiastical and political opponent, could welcome those very men to his table, and make their differences the subject of lively banter and repartee. But this pointed to no concession or compromise on such points of difference.

College Chapel, on the evening of the 3rd of June, 1847, to partake of the hospitalities customary at those triennial assemblages, and to present to him a massive silver inkstand, since appropriated to the use of his episcopal successors in perpetuity. No wonder that the impressions produced by all this were "of the most gratifying and refreshing nature" to Churchmen; but as for the "Dissenters," whose lack of "deference to the authority of the Church" had been one of the special subjects of denunciation in the Triennial Address of the morning: some of the proceedings were little calculated to persuade them that they had yet got a college in which students of all sects and creeds were to enjoy equal rights and privileges. In reality the University question was unhappily involved in all the bitterness of ecclesiastical rivalry in regard to Clergy Reserves and other matters; and so ere long the Episcopal King's College had a rival Presbyterian Queen's College, and a Roman Catholic Regiopolis College at Kingston, a Methodist Victoria College at Cobourg; and in recent years, an Episcopal Methodist Albert College at Belleville: of all of which Dr. Strachan may be very legitimately regarded as founder. But the good Bishop went on his way without doubt or hesitation. His heart was set on the realisation of a grand ideal, which he did accomplish at last, though after a very different fashion from that of his youthful dream.

When the full control of provincial government was conceded to the Canadian Legislature, the education question was anew taken in hand. taken in hand. A general scheme of Grammar and Common Schools was adopted on strictly non-denominational principles; and the University of King's College was reorganized in harmony with the general scheme. The leading object of the new University Bill was to place all denominations on a perfect equality; or, as the Bishop stated, in To this hospitable mansion the clergy re- his protest, "to place all forms of error

upon an equality with truth, by patronizing equally within the same institution an unlimited number of sects whose doctrines are absolutely irreconcileable"; a principle which he accordingly denounced as "atheistical" and more monstrous in its inevitable results than the madness of the French Revolution!

With such views any further relations with the remodelled University were impossible. The Bishop seemed to have spent the labour of a life-time for nought. He now set to work with characteristic energy to establish a Church University, on the model of his original charter; headed the subscription list with his own generous gift of £1,000; appealed for contributions in money and land; and after meeting with a hearty response from his own people, the aged Bishop, now in his seventy-third year, started once more for England, and there obtained £15,000 sterling in money, and the promise of a Royal charter for a new college, which should realise all that had been guaranteed in the abortive charter of George IV. upwards of a quarter of a century before. On the 30th of April, 1851, another foundation-stone was laid. The bishop himself now officiated. He pronounced the new College to be "a burst of Christian benevolence, to remedy an intolerable act of injustice; and to prove that all oppression is short-sighted, and sure in God's own time to be overruled for good. It is," said he, "peculiarly the child of the Church; from her it springs, and under her wing it desires to nestle;" and so Trinity. College was inaugurated, and now stands the most fitting and worthy monument of the venerable Bishop, to whose energy and indomitable zeal its existence and its special characteristics as an exclusive Church institution are alike due.

ponents as high-handed enough. When a like course roused him to opposition, he proved all the more formidable as an antagonist. The war of 1812 was no sooner well over than the soldiers and sailors who had served in the defence of Canada in many cases returned to settle in its clearings. The Bathurst district was chiefly filled up by a sturdy band of Scottish emigrants; and then, in their wake, followed the Earl of Selkirk, with a scheme for settling the Red River region of the far West, which, had it been encouraged might have rescued that wilderness from Crees and buffaloes, and organized the Province of Manitoba a full half century earlier. But rival fur companies watched the project with distrust, and the Scottish Earl, finding his project thwarted where the only law was that of force, adopted "the good old rule, the simple plan ;" and so Montreal, the head quarters of the North-West Fur Company, was startled with the news that he and his Scottish followers had captured Fort William, and imprisoned the company's factors. Dr. Strachan had no idea of neutrality. He threw himself with characteristic energy into the contest and wrote a pamphlet against Lord Selkirk, exposing both his acts and aims as opposed to right and justice. Whatever may now be thought of the merits of the question as a whole, the collision between the rival parties had been attended with acts of violence and bloodshed, such as a Christian minister might well denounce; and so Lord Selkirk made a hasty retreat home.

His

But it is with no mingling doubt as to the merits of the cause that we turn to contemplate him as a Christian minister, in all the charitable social relations of life. cheery greeting, and kindly sympathetic enquiries for the afflicted, were neither limited to the circle of his friends, nor to the members of his own communion. There, at least he was catholic in the largest sense. If the most uncompromising opponent—

But the courageous resolution and intrepidity of Dr. Strachan found in other ways fitting opportunities for their exertion. Not a few of his own doings, both as Executive the clerical abettor of denominational Councillor and Bishop were regarded by op-poachers on his Clerical Reserves fund, the

political pamphleteer, or newspaper assailant of his cherished schemes- were laid prostrate by sickness, Dr. Strachan was among the foremost with proffered sympathy, or, if need were, substantial aid. With open heart and liberal hand he dispensed the charities of a generous nature; and in the hour of convalescence would cheer his old antagonist with bantering challenge to renewed warfare. It is pleasant so to think of him welcome wherever he visited, in joy or sorrow, and everywhere a special favourite with the young. His kindly greeting was shared even by the household dog; and in his own later years, not the least characteristic feature of the bishop's library was his huge tom-cat comfortably coiled on the well-cushioned easy chair. Or again, in equally pleasant contrast to such homely scenes, we recall him on his long and toilsome missionary tours and episcopal visitations, undaunted by cold, hunger, fatigue, or privation; as genial and kindly among the poor settlers in their frontier log-cabin, as in the best society that Toronto could supply; and even in old age shaming the youngest of his clergy by the cheerfulness with which he bore the inevitable fastings and privations of their journeys into the wilds of Canada. Again, his fearless labours attract attention under another aspect. When during the terrible outbreak of cholera in 1832, it was computed that a fourth of the whole population of Toronto were attacked, and upwards of a twelfth died of the malignant disease. While hundreds were fleeing from the plague-stricken city, Dr. Strachan devoted himself to tending on the sick and dying with such self-sacrificing zeal, that the admiration excited by his conduct found ex

pression in the form of a beautiful silver vase presented to him by his fellow-citizens, the inscription on which records that it is a memorial of respect and gratitude for his fearless and humane devotion to the duties of Christian philanthropy during the visitation of an appalling pestilence.

As his long and busy life drew towards its end, many of the earlier causes of strife and contention had been removed; and it seemed as if the calm of a beautiful autumnal evening gathered around life's close. The hand of time had been laid gently on him; yet as he approached his ninetieth year it was impossible that he should not feel the pressure of many exacting official duties. In 1866, accordingly, his old pupil and friend, Dr. A. N. Bethune, Archdeacon of Toronto, was elected his coadjutor in the episcopate, and he felt himself free to spend the few remaining months of life in kindly, genial intercourse with old friends, and with some also who had been old opponents. When at length, on the 1st of November, 1867, he expired at the venerable age of ninety, men of all creeds in religion and in politics united to do honour to his memory. His integrity of purpose was universally acknowledged; his liberal charities, so unostentatiously distributed, were recalled with grateful recognition; and many were ready to own that they owed to his generosity the assistance which had been rendered to them in the hour of adversity, or the means which enabled them to start on a successful career. He was a man of mark; and whatever be thought of the ideal he pursued with such zeal and singleness of purpose, he has left his enduring impress on the country of his adoption.

BOOKS.

BY ALEXANDER MCLACHLAN.

"My library was dukedom large enough."

WE

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-Shakspeare.

E once heard an enthusiastic hunter, after an exciting day's sport, exclaim, "Surely the man who does not love hunting can have no soul!" The hunting spirit never having got hold of us, we therefore could hardly join in the sentiment. But we have sometimes thought that the man who does not love books must be sadly deficient somewhere in the upper story. We have even wondered if he could have any upper story at all, when he preferred to live away down among the grubs and the gossips, to associating with the great immortals. But be that as it may, some men never read any thing but the "prices current," catalogues and almanacs. Others read merely for amusement, or to help to pass an idle hour, or put in a rainy day, and could do well enough without it. But with us books are an every day necessity, and have been so ever since that long delightful summer of our boyhood when we lived on the Island of Juan Fernandez in company with Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday. That was our first acquaintance with books-it was indeed an era in our existence, for it shaped and coloured our life-long journey. After leaving the island we set out on our travels with Mungo Park through the centre of Africa; and after "doing that region," we started on a voyage of discovery with Captain Cook, and after circumnavigating the world, returned only to set out again for "fresh fields and pastures new"-to range through the kingdoms of science, literature and art. We are likely to continue our journey to the end of life's chapter, for the more we travel the farther

the fields extend, and are all the time growing more wonderful and incomprehensible, "And realms of which we nothing know, Keep multiplying as we go." "Books," says Milton, "are not absolutely dead things, but do convey a potency of life in them to be as active as the soul was, whose progeny they were: nay, they do preserve as in a phial, the purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellect that bred them." To us they are veritable beings, living souls, dear companions! to whom we go in joy or in sorrow. Our experiences, good or bad, are not new to them, for they have felt exactly as we feel, and can there fore sympathize with us, and in the deepest and the darkest hour we hear their voices whispering "courage."

Books are the mirrors of humanity; yea, the stage on which the dead appear to reenact "life's tragedy again." Most people do not believe in ghosts. But look there! what is that? Lo! it is the "melancholy Dane," still soliloquizing, and exclaiming,

"To be or not to be!"

And here comes something far more wonderful than any ghost, even Falstaff himself, lacking not an ounce of flesh, and hale and hearty as when he fought the "men in buckram." There also comes the knight of La Mancha, still prancing on his Rosinante and exclaiming, "There is still sunshine on the wall." Lift a volume, open the leaves, and lo! as if by magic, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Babylon and Assyria appear, and pass like panoramic pictures before us, with Britain and America in the distance, and many more following each other like the progeny

of Banquo,

as if the line would stretch out voices, and introduced even to the shanty to the crack of doom." of the backwoodsman, company that a king might envy.

If

There are some books of which we never weary, for they are fresh and new after the fiftieth reading. We never fathom them, for they are deep wells of thought, from which the bucket always comes up over flowing. Every time we drink at those unexhaustible fountains we are refreshed; every time we look into their unfathomable depths we are filled with awe and wonder, and are elevated thereby. When we open a real book we cease to be ourselves, we get into the author's sphere, and he literally takes possession of us; we see with his eyes, we hear with his ears, think with his mind, and judge with his understanding. He recreates all nature for us anew, and we are mirthful or melancholy at his pleasure. we open "Paradise Lost," we are instantly taken away from this little petty peddling, bargain-making time, and transported into the dawn of a glorious day, and the beings with whom we come in contact are all of preternatural stature, and have a shadowy grandeur about them; and we wonder at the degeneracy of mankind. People tell us they do not believe in magic, and yet what magic there is in thus giving to "airy nothings. a local habitation and a name"! What magic in thus giving to immaterial thought a permanent form, which defies the power of space, of death, and time! We can never be without good company if we have a few good books, for they contain the life experiences of the greatest men. We can have their opinion on all the great problems that have perplexed mankind. They are raised above the petty passions and interests of the hour, and talk to us with a sublime serenity. What a joy they have always been to the sad and the solitary! They have peopled the desert, and filled the solitude with aerial

At one period it was our lot to live away back in the bush, where intercourse with our fellow men was rare, and save for the few books we had, the solitude would have been insupportable. But we were not without company, for

My cabin seemed a whole world-wide,
Kings entered in without their pride,
And warriors laid their swords aside.

There came the Saxon, there the Celt, And all had knelt where I had knelt, For all had felt what I had felt.

I saw, from clime and creed apart,
Heaving beneath their robes of art,
One universal human heart.

And Homer and Sir Walter Scott
Came to me in that humble cot,
And cheered with tales my lowly lot.
And Burns came singing songs divine,
His great heart heaving in each line;
A glorious company was mine!

I was the brother of the great!
Shakespeare himself on me did wait
With leaves torn from the Book of Fate.

They asked me not of rank or creed,
And yet supplied my spirit's need:
O they were comforters indeed!

And showed me by their magie art, Those awful things at which we startThat hover round the human heart —

Fate, ever watching with her shears, And mixing all our hopes with fears, And drenching all our joys with tears.

They showed how contradictions throngHow, by our weakness, we are strong; And how we're righted by the wrong ;

Unveiled new regions to my sight, Transformed the weary winter's night, Into a spring-time of delight.

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