The Relation of Canada to the Imperial Country - Confedera- tion - Quebec - Titles for Colonists-Political Parties- Sir John Macdonald — George Brown - Alexander Mac- kenzie Edward Blake - John Sandfield Macdonald Joseph Howe Francis Hincks — Sir Richard Cartwright Sir Charles Tupper- The Destiny of the Colonies — An- nexation" Canada First"-The Irish Question - Free -- - - - Marriage "The Grange"- Our Household - General Mid- dleton Civic Charities- The Governor-Generalship – GOLDWIN SMITH AT ABOUT FORTY YEARS OF AGE GOLDWIN SMITH AT ABOUT FORTY YEARS OF AGE FACING PAGES 12 Copy of a photograph by Mayall, of Brighton. (The original FACSIMILE OF PARAGRAPH ON PAGE 183. Showing (i) original manuscript (as dictated to me); (ii) an PHOTOGRAPH OF A BUST OF GOLDWIN SMITH 25 183 272 Made at Oxford about 1866, by Alexander Munro. GOLDWIN SMITH AT ABOUT FORTY-FIVE YEARS OF AGE 365 PHOTOGRAPH OF A DEATH-MASK OF GOLDWIN SMITH Made by Mr. Walter S. Allward, of Toronto, on June the ninth, 1910. 464 REMINISCENCES CHAPTER I BOYHOOD 1823-1834 Reading - Social Life - My Father and Family-Our House Old Customs. THE old town of Reading, with its still quaint-looking streets, its ruined abbey and friary, its memories of medieval Congresses and Roundhead sieges, sleeps, as my memory paints it, in the summer sun. It is a very quiet place. The mail-coaches travelling on the Bath road at the marvellous rate of twelve miles an hour change horses at The Crown and the Bear. So do the travelling carriages and post-chaises of the wealthier wayfarer. The watchman calls the hour of the night. From the tower of old St. Lawrence's Church the curfew is tolled. My nurse lights the fire with the tinder-box. Over at Caversham 1a man is sitting in the stocks. In the streets are figures of a generation now bygone. Mrs. Atkins Wright, the great lady of the neighbourhood, comes in with her carriage-and-four, postillions [1 A parish in Oxfordshire, a mile from Reading.] 1 in gorgeous liveries, and an out-rider. Mr. Fyshe Palmer,1 the Radical Member for the borough, is known by his Whig costume of blue coat and buff waistcoat, with a curious little hat stuck on his powdered head. The Quaker dress abounds. It is worn by Huntley and Palmer, who keep a little biscuit-shop in London Street, where a little boy buys cakes, and from which has since sprung the biscuit factory of the universe. The shop of the principal draper is the ladies' Club. Into old St. Lawrence's Church, not yet restored, the Mayor and Aldermen march, robed, with the mace borne before them. In the pulpit, orthodoxy drones undisturbed by Ritualism or the Higher Criticism. The clerk below gives out the Christmas Hymn, saying at the end of each line "Hal!" in which he does not recognize an abbreviation of "Hallelujah." On a high seat in a high-backed pew sits a little boy, wishing the sermon would end, staring at the effigy of St. Lawrence on the capital of a pillar overhead, and wondering what the man could have been doing on the gridiron. Now and then his ear catches the sound of the Beadle's cane waking up a slumbering charity-boy to the orthodox excellence of the sermon. Compulsory Chapel at Eton and Oxford confirmed the impression compulsory Church at Reading had made. The clergyman, the doctor, the solicitor, the banker, [ Charles Fyshe Palmer, seven times elected Member for Reading, was born in 1769 and died in 1843. See "The Town of Reading." By W. M. Childs. Reading: University College. 1910. Page 62.] |