THE TOWN OF PARIS. the dead and torn fish which still appended to him, his grasp in death as deadly as in life. This however, could not last long, and the Paris is beautifully and advantageously situpoor bull, completely exhausted, sunk down ated at the junction of the Grand River with vanquished by a dead fish! The dogs were Smith's Creek, in the township of South Dumtaken off him, as likewise the remains of fries, in the county of Brant, and is distant 25 my pike, which could have been but little miles from Hamilton. It was first located, short of twenty pounds, and it was so torn some twenty-three or twenty-four years ago, by as to be fit only for the dogs, who did not Hiram Capron, Esq., who purchased a large however seem to relish it. The herdsmen tract of land, and he wisely foresaw that the were much amused with the recital of my locality on which Paris now stands must one day become an important place. The town derives adventure, and assured me the bull would its name from the immense bed of gypsum (or quickly recover from the effects of his spree; and such another, I hardly think, he would plaster of Paris) which exist in the hills on the wish to be engaged in banks of the Grand River, in its immediate vicinity. In the year 1850 Paris contained a population of 1810 persons, but her inhabitants now number nearly 3000 soul, and was set apart as an Incorporated Village during that year. In 1851 the assessment roll was only £7502, but so rapid has been the increase, that in 1854 it mounted to £12,395, which will be greatly augmented next year, as its boundaries have been considerably enlarged by an order of the Governor in Council, There is very extensive water facilities, derived from Smith's Creek and the Grand River; that on Smith's Creek amounting to about 87. horse-power, has been in operation for some years, driving two flouring mills, two plaster mills, two foundries, a woollen factory, a sawmill, a tannery, and several mechanic shops. The power on the Grand River has hitherto been idle, but is now, happily, being called into use. Last year, the Paris Hydraulic Company obtained a charter to raise £3000, to enable them to open up a fall at the south end of the Its exports are considerable. The two flour- and the "Maple Leaf," which has been in existing mills turn out some 40,000 barrels annu-ence six weeks, is in connection with the Conally, while 20,000 more are brought into servative party. Paris from the neighbouring mills for ex- The high bridge, which forms a conspicuportation. The plaster mills grind about 3000 tons of plaster per annum, which amount is fast bridge of the Buffalo, Brantford, and Goderich ous object in our view of Paris, is the increasing, as carriage is so ready by the rail. Railway, over the Grand River. It was built There is also a large saw-mill, which cuts and in 1853 by Messrs. Mellish, Morrell, & Russell. exports some 1,000,000 feet of lumber annually. It is 100 feet high, and 788 feet long, and is of There is brought into Paris 250,000 bushels of the how-truss principle, built of wood and iron, wheat every year, which are either manufac- and supported by solid stone piers, costing tured into flour or bought for exportation. The £25,000. It is a very beautiful structure. hills on the Grand River, near the town, abound with plaster of the first quality. There are five plaster beds now in operation, but the supply is considered to be inexhaustible. This is a great internal source of wealth, which but few places in the Province possess. As is well known, the Great Western Railway has a large station here, which is considered as the third in importance on that flourishing line. During the first six months of this railway being in operation, no less than 13,000 'passengers left Paris by it. The Buffalo, Brantford, and Goderich Company have also a station, and joins the Great Western, at Paris. These two railways afford great facilities for travel and the conveyance of merchandise to and from this town. The general appearance of Paris is highly attractive. It possesses an excellent town-hall and market, erected last year at a cost of nearly £4000. It has seven churches, belonging to the Episcopal, Congregational, Methodist, Baptist, United Presbyterian, Free Church, and Roman Catholic bodies. Some of them are ele The scenery of Paris and its immediate neighbourhood is highly beautiful and romantic. between its lofty and luxuriant banks, covered The noble and rapid river running through it with rich foliage, immediately arrests the attention of the stranger, who is at once impressed with the beautiful situation of the town. Paris, built on a gravelly soil, is some 500 feet above Lake Ontario, and is exceedingly healthy. The country around Paris cannot be surpassed for beauty of scenery or fertility of the soil. It is inhabited by an industrious and wealthy population, and the land produces the finest wheat. Indeed the far-famed Genessee Valley cannot surpass the quality of grain raised in old Dumfries. As an instance of which, it may be stated that on the farm of D. Christie, Esq., was raised the wheat to which was awarded the first prize at the World's Fair at London, in 1851. It is the general remark of Americans who pass through this section of the Province, that they never saw a finer or better tilled land in their lives. gant brick structures. There is a large num- have much to be thankful for. They are situated Taken altogether the inhabitants of Paris ber of stores, many of which would do credit to in a splendid locality. Excellent gravel roads a city, and the merchants of Paris are amongst lead into Paris in all directions, her streets sound the most prosperous in the Province. Several with the busy hum of industry on every side, brick and stone stores are also in process her citizens are enterprising, industrious, and of erection, which are rented as fast as finished. A large first-class hotel is also now being and the right use of the great natural facilities prosperous, and ere long, by their exertions, built, in order to afford accommodation to the that Providence has given her, she must begreatly increasing number of travellers who come a large manufacturing town-the Lowell resort to, or pass through Paris. There are of Canada. extensive nurseries on the high land above the town, which ere long will rank with the first in the Province. Or all the actions of life our marriage least concerns other people, yet of all the actions of our life it is most meddled with by other people. Two newspapers also hail from Paris. They are both large and well-printed journals, and bear the stamp of prosperity. The "Star," which commenced some five years ago, and has a very wide circulation, is liberal in its politics; themselves friends. Many who, in our days of wealth we deemed but heartless churls, have in our distress shown THE MAN WHO WAS BLESSED WITH A figure beyond that of a fashionable idler, and left college, after three or four terms, without a degree, and in good favour with the tradesmen, as a very easy and safe customer. EVERY boy in Dr. Lashem's school envied In the course of years, Tom's father diedTom Heaviside, the parlor-boarder, for Tom was the richest and best-tempered fellow of us you may see the scutcheon and marble slab reall. But besides being rich and good-tempered, cording his virtues in the chancel of the village he possessed a natural aptitude for learning church any day-and Tom succeeded to the He did not attempt any improvements which would have been a fortune to him had he estate. ever required to exert it. Unfortunately for on the land or in the village; and so, though he Tom, he was born to a competence. His school-was generally considered a pretty good landlord, days were passed for the most part in luxurious he was never very popular with his neighbours idleness. Though he was ready enough at or his tenantry. He was invited to stand for times to assist a class-mate with his theme or the county, but he was getting corpulent and To be sure, he translation, he was seldom perfect himself. lazy, and declined the offer. "And after all," he would say, "where was went to London now and then, but he made no the use of his bothering himself about learning, figure in politics or the world, and was connothing particular," even by the he hadn't to get a living by it." And so, in sidered " due time, after sauntering away four or five waiters at his club. His doctor advised travel as an antidote to his years upon the threshold of knowledge, and knowing a deal more about how to tickle trouts increasing corpulency, and so Tom made the as they slept under the stones in the doctor's grand tour in a lazy fashion-sauntering about fishpond, or the " points" of dogs and horses, Paris for a while, visiting Berlin, going up the which latter knowledge he had acquired from Rhine in a steam-boat, playing in a nonchalant his father's groom, than of Horace or Virgil, manner at the gambling-houses in the little Tom Heaviside left school, to the great grief of towns on its banks, and coming back no wiser and no slimmer than he went. us all. Tom remained in London after his return As became a gentleman's son, of course Tom went to college. The vicar recommended Cam- from the continent, because, as he said, "it was bridge, as most likely, he said, to bring that dull down at his place in Barkshire, with only out of him which he was sure Tom had in him the old lady, his mother, and the servants." -the capacity of distinguishing himself. But But he did not enter into many of the dissipathe vicar's advice was not taken, and Tom went tions of town life-he was too lazy for that; to Oxford, because that was the gentleman's and his chief occupations appeared to consist of college, and as his father observed, he would be smoking, newspaper reading, and billiard playsure to get amongst the "best set" there. ing, which latter game he played in a careless Brazenose was the college selected, because fashion of his own, which everybody said might Tom's father's friend's son, Sir Richard, was be greatly improved if he tried. In fact, as Tom there already. At college Tom did not dis- got older, his idleness grew into a habit. He tinguish himself as a scholar, though every-would get up about ten in the morning, sit for body said he might have done so had he chosen. a long time over his breakfast, at which meal Indeed the undergraduates to a man declared he would read any book that came to hand; that he had the "stuff in him," and if he only smoke a cigar directly afterwards; dress for a cared to exert himself he might have gained walk or a ride by about two; take his walk or honours. But then being blessed with a com- ride, during which he would smoke several more petency, Tom contented himself with driving the cigars; dine at his club about six, take a nap best four-in-hand, being the best-mounted red- for half an hour or so, with the newspaper in coat of his college when they took the field after his hand, in the smoking-room, saunter up stairs the hounds, and being esteemed an indifferently to the billiard-room, and get home sober to his good coxswain when he could be persuaded to hotel, in George Street, about twelve. And in sufficiently exert himself to make one in a this way day after day would be spent. He was not by any means blind to his own boating-party on the Icis. His abilities were He knew that his neglect undeniable, everybody acknowledged that; but failings, nevertheless. then, having no need to exert them, he made no of his estate was daily injuring it, both morally VOL. V. H. and pecuniarily. He knew that his idle life in spectable man, with children's faces round his London was a morally bad and useless one, hearth, but he had failed to cultivate society so because it was productive of no good results to long that society had almost forgotten his exhimself or others. He knew that he had neg-istence; he might have been a respectable poet, lected opportunities which few possessed, and for he bethought him of some good translations wasted talents on trifles, which might have of Juvenal's satires he had once executed for a made him, under different circumstances, a use- college friend, but that he had neglected his ful man in his generation. Well, he would studies; he might have been respected and remend all this; he would go home and take the spectable, but that he was blessed with a commanagement of the estate into his own hands, petency, which fact had crushed the natural and gladden the eyes of his old mother once ambition which teaches men to rise in the world, more; he would marry and reform. And then, and make for themselves names and reputations in the excitement of these good resolutions, he among their fellows. would write hasty letters to his mother, and his steward, and his land agent, and his lawyer, and for a day or two would be quite busy making preparations for leaving London. He never married, he never reformed, he never retrenched; but with a cigar in his mouth he went lazily about his grounds or sat in his library, till death came at last and found him unprepared to die. Does this little sketch need to be enforced by a moral? We think not. But in a day or two the heat of the reform fever would go off, and he would resume his old His heir, some fiftieth cousin, came to his idle, uneventful, useless life: and so year suc-funeral with the rest of his scattered family, ceeded year. If ever he went down to "his and took possession of the estate. Not having place in Barkshire," it was only for a few weeks been blessed with a competency, he speedily set in the shooting-season; and as he got older and about putting things to rights. He sold onestouter, he grew yet more disinclined to exert half the estate, paid off the incumbrances upon himself. But at last, when his mother died, he it, had the grass cleared out of the gravel walks took up a permanent residence in the old house. of the lawn, rebuilt the farms, got rid of nonThe man however, had not changed so fast as paying tenants, and in less than half a dozen his place. The farms were ill-let and the tene- years afterwards sat in the House of Commons ments out of repair, and the villagers hardly as member for the county, and was acknowledged cared to acknowledge the squire when he came on all hands to be a most promising young man to reside in their midst, and everything bespoke and an ornament to his county. an absent proprietor. There was ruin everywhere; and though Tom was blessed with a competency, it was only a competency. He had lived, such a life as it was, fully up to his income, and nothing now remained but to make the best of it, and take things as he found them. At least that was Tom's notion of the A cursory glance at the history of the world, matter; and thus, instead of looking his affairs from those distant ages of antiquity, whose only boldly in the face, he sat himself lazily down in memorials are the ruins of Babylon, or the his library, and dreamed his life away with a palace-mounds of ancient Nineveh, to the busy cigar in his mouth and a book in his hand. commercial present of A.D. 1854, would lead to the The best years of his life had passed fruitlessly supposition that slavery was either a political away, and it was scarcely to be expected that or an economic necessity-an hereditary evil, now he had attained the steady side of fifty he so to speak, among the nations of the earth, could retrench or reform. He remembered, only extinguished amid the crash of fallen emsadly enough sometimes, how all the bright pires in the Old World, to re-appear in a future promises of his youth had one by one proved epoch, and in another form, in the more recently failures. He might have been a good landlord, discovered territories of the New. Of its univerhe felt, but that he had neglected his estate till sality among the ancient nations, there can be no its final ruin was irretrievable; he might have doubt. Almost every great city, every great proved a useful member of Parliament, but he work of antique civilisation, the pyramids of had let the opportunity slip through his hands Egypt, the rampart walls of Babylon, the temwithout a struggle; he might have been a re-ple of Jerusalem, and the city of ancient Rome, COTTON, SLAVES, AND SLAVERY. were all built by the forced labour of slaves; rightly judging sympathisers at home, have but while we may consider the state of serfdom in small chance of success. That, however, which the feudal system of the middle ages in Europe the will of man is sometimes most resolute to to be the connecting link between slavery in maintain, the slow, though not imperceptible ancient and modern times, existing, as that effects of circumstances often tend to abrogate. system unquestionably did, at the time of the Of all changes which have distinguished this discovery of America in the fifteenth century. nineteenth century from its predecessors, none And, when feudality was extinguished in Europe is more remarkable for the rapidity of its proby the combined influences of advancing civiliza- gress in the present, or more pregnant with imtion, and commerce, and increasing population, portant results for the future, then the alteration we have only to cast our eyes on the map of the which is taking place in the condition of that New World, to behold the seeds of the same dire great class of our countrymen whose daily bread evil germinating in the Spanish colonies of the is won by their daily labour. Steam, the mirsouthern main, to eventually take even deeper acle work of modern times, which began by curroot in those settlements of the north, which tailing their modes of employment at home, has were the nucleus of the present United States. ended by opening up to them more extensive Widely, however, as slavery may have differed, and lucrative markets for their labour abroad. in these successive epochs, in form as in prac- While the political convulsions of our day extice, yet, to our thinking, the original cause, plode in air, like the loud but profitless exthe corner-stone on which it has reared its hide-plosions of a volcano, productive of no permanent ous front among mankind, has been always the result, this far mightier social revolution, which. same-it is less a political than an economic and is gradually upheaving the masses in the social social necessity, originating in the scarcity of scale, resembles the rising of those fair islands labour. For, although there is reason to sup- of the Pacific from the deep, which are the slow pose that the ancient empires of the East were but sure work of time. It is a process which numerously, though, probably, not densely is developing the Australian bush and the Canpeopled, yet the want of mechanical skill, which adian forest into the republics and empires of a caused all their stupendous public works to be future age. And, though irrelevant to the subdone by the labour of men's hands, necessitated|ject of our essay, we may remark, that this the employment of immense bodies of workmen. silent revolution, as it has been aptly termed, Slavery, in the remote times of which we speak, will be as productive of change in the condition existed in the patriarchal form, as described in of the working man who remains at home, as in the Old Testament. The more odious features that of him who emigrates abroad. Already it of the system, the legalised traffic in human bids fair materially to alter, if not eventually to flesh, the forcible abduction of thousands of reverse, the present relations of employer or innocent families from their native continent to employed, and to derange with new and emthe shores of the New World, are atrocities barrassing fluctuations the statu quo in the marwhich have been engrafted on it in comparatively ket of labour. Without participating in the modern times. That labour, the great desidera- fears of those who foretell that famine, lawlesstum of every colony and new country, should ness, and disorder, will be rife among the heterohave been, as it still is, the want of America, geneous community assembled at the diggings, whose trackless solitudes offer to every man the or that ruin, and a state of collapse in the money prize of independence, is neither matter of market, will be the result of the gold mania, we novelty nor doubt; and that, misled, as we firmly may safely draw the inference, that considerable believe, by erroneous notions of the greater numbers of their daily increasing population will cheapness of slave labour compared with free, eventually weary of a toilsome, and frequently the slave owners still cling to their peculiar in- unsuccessful, search for a metal, the very abunstitution,' in days like the present, when that dance of which must ultimately cause it to descarcity, from the tide of emigration and other teriorate in value, and turn their attention to causes, is admitted to be rapidly on the decrease, the pursuits of agriculture. It would seem, is another fact too well known to need repetition indeed, the design of Providence that the glitat our hands. But, against this prejudice, tering metal should be found in the rivers of strengthened by long-established custom, we Australia, or imbedded in its rocks, in order believe that the exertions of the abolitionists in that the toiling millions of England should be America, and of honest, though not always, lured to cross the wastes of ocean in its pursu |