J. REDPATH, Esq.

Toronto, Sept. 9th, 1859.

My Dear Sir, I have this morning received yours of the 7th, and hasten to reply. Mr. MacVicar has received the whole (I may say) of his education under my immediate care and guidance, and I have watched the development of his mind. with much interest. I know him thoroughly, and can say without hesitation that his natural thinking powers are of a very high order. I found him capable of entering into the profoundest metaphysical questions. He was not, perhaps, very rapid in seizing hold of views remote from those popularly entertained; but by patient reflection, he was able after a while to enter deeply into the subjects brought before him, and to take a firm and most intelligent grasp of them. Indeed, I am perhaps inclined to think too favorably of him, because he was one of the very few students who have been under my care, who thoroughly mastered the peculiar system of metaphysical truth which I am accustomed to deliver. I do not mean that he swallowed my doctrines, bones and all, without hesitation. The reverse was the case. He was slow to believe; had many difficulties; and it was only after the fullest discussion of these that he at length grasped the subject fully. But I value an intelligent persuasion, founded upon the thorough discussion and mastery of apparent difficulties, infinitely more than a ready, wholesale, otiose assent, which may be accorded without the least reflective energy being exerted. I enter into these particulars to show you the sterling character (at least in my opinion) of Mr. MacVicar's mind, as regards its

thinking power. And this is a very important quality, because it renders it morally certain that he will never lapse, as a preacher, into mere declamation, or be satisfied to present his hearers with anything in which there is not definite, well-digested, and important thought. I hope he will be a popular preacher; but I think it certain that he will not be a mere popular preacher.

With respect more particularly to the subject of your letter, I would consider it a matter of consequence for Mr. MacVicar himself to be for some time in a situation where he would have more opportunity for private study and personal improvement than in Montreal. His mind has not yet attained its full development. It is one of those minds which are rather slow of ripening; and I should fear that, were he at once settled in Montreal, even with an assistant (which, by the way, would be very awkward), his capacity for enlarged usefulness would be hindered in its growth.

I am, my dear sir, yours truly,

GEORGE PAXTON YOUNG.

P.S.-In what I have said above, I do not mean to intimate that, were Mr. MacVicar called to Coté Street, he would be found insufficient for the work. Quite the reverse. I believe he would not disappoint you. It is solely because I believe his own improvement would be retarded by his at once entering on so great a charge, that I have written as I have done. G. P. Y.

This communication, so far from quenching the ardor of the Montreal people, increased their desire

to secure this young man as their minister. Within a year, they sent a deputation West to inquire how the Professor's favorite was getting on; with the result that, finding things as described in the preceding chapter, hesitation vanished. After a healthtrip to Boston, New York and Philadelphia, he was inducted into the charge of Coté Street Church, on January 30th, 1861.

Those were the exciting days of agitation against slavery, when Wendell Phillips lectured on—" a pretty subject for the Sabbath," the young traveller characterized it—" Mobs," and had a fresh mob on his heels along the road home. The enjoyment of this brief visit to the States was enhanced by the purchase in New York of some four hundred volumes for his library, the gift of his new congregation. Their desire to facilitate his fuller equipment for the work to which they had called him was to be the earnest of many practical demonstrations in the future of their faith both in the man and in any enterprise to which he saw fit, even against his better judgment, to commit himself. He often said in after days that it was with fear and trembling that he assumed the work of the pastorate in Montreal, just as at the conclusion of that pastorate, he assumed, only with gravest misgivings, the work to which he was called in connection with the founding of the Presbyterian College, Montreal.

Coté Street Spire.

HAVE BOUGHT a
Boston hat,

new

which makes me
look exactly like the
Prince!" So he
wrote gaily from
the States. Then,
as if abashed at the
thought of his own
vanity, he sobered
down, and
"But what folly!"

added,

Folly or no, it

was a happy omen on arriving in Montreal to "look like the Prince," for the visit in 1860 of that youth-now His Majesty King Edward VII-was commonly interpreted by Montrealers as having afforded an auspicious inauguration to a new era of prosperity after many struggles and sorrows on the part of Canada's premier city. If, at Guelph, the young man had been fortunate enough to take up a disheartening work

46

at a time of railway development, he was still more fortunate to reach Montreal at a time when the population had been increasing with tremendous strides doubling itself within a single decade—and when new buildings were rising from year to year by the thousand.

It was a transitional period. Old things were passing away, and all things were becoming new. Beaver Hall, once the seat of the Frobishers, had gone up in flames. Burnside, the residence. of the founder of McGill, had become a scene of desolation. Simon MacTavish's haunted house, where fabulous hosts of spirits used to dance on the tin roof in the moonlight, had just been pulled down. The quaint old Château de Ramezay, as the residence of the British Governors and the centre of court life, had been abandoned. The march of modern progress absorbed attention. The horsecar system, then as marvellous for its convenience as it is now antiquated, had just been introduced. The Crystal Palace, in all the glory of putty, glass and paint, glittered in the eyes of the populace. The Prince of Wales had driven home his rivet of gold in the centre span of Victoria Tubular Bridge, then regarded as the greatest feat of engineering skill in the world. The Grand Trunk Railway was rapidly advancing in its development. The first ocean steamship line had been established. A huge bonfire blazed from the top of Mount Royal in jubilation over the laying of the Atlantic cable. John