ORILLIA MEMORIES.

HENRY SCADDING, D.D. (b. 1813).

[The York Pioneers directed their annual excursion of June 1882 to Orillia, on Lake Couchiching (Ontario), where they were welcomed by the Mayor and Council. To the address of welcome the Pioneers replied through Dr. Scadding, who, by his Toronto of Old, and by his contributions to the Journal of the Canadian Institute, has greatly promoted antiquarian research in the Province of Ontario.]

"All roads lead to Rome," the old proverb said; and somewhat so, if not all, yet many of the old lines of communication seem to have led to this quarter, which was known as the Place of Meeting, the Place of Concourse, the Otoronton, or, for brevity, the Toronto, where the Wyandots and other tribes did congregate, tilling the soil and ceasing to be nomad to a very great extent, until the region was laid waste by the Iroquois from the other side of Lake Ontario, and the population were in part massacred and in part dispersed to the west, east, and south. It was, as we know, wholly from its relation to this well-peopled region that Fort Rouillé, down near the mouth of the Humber, where a trail from this quarter terminated, came to be popularly called Fort Toronto. That fort or trading post was a depôt of traffic for the region up here, and therefore derived its popular but unofficial name from this quarter. Hence those of us who live in Toronto always visit this spot, and the shores of Lake Simcoe generally, with peculiar feelings of curiosity, and even of veneration. "Search out your ancient mother," said the old oracle. We obey it, and track up to this spot the origin of our name and the commencing point of our existence as an emporium of trade and commerce. Lake Simcoe, as we know, is marked on the old maps as Lake Toronto. Matchedash Bay was the Bay of Toronto; the River Humber was the Toronto River; and the water connection round by Balsam and Sturgeon Lakes the Otonabee. Rice Lake, Trent, and Bay of Quinte were also in general terms the Toronto River, receiving a branch trail, via the Scugog waters, from the mouth of Smith's Creek, or Port Hope, which was once known as Teiaiagon—that is, the Portage; a name applied also on the maps to the site of Toronto, for a like reason, because it was the place of debarkation for the portage to Lake Toronto (that is, Lake Simcoe), the common point of convergence, as I have said, from time immemorial, of hunting and trading parties from the east, west, north, and south.

You wisely appreciate the historical character of your neighborhood. It is not merely the trees, the fields, the lakes, the streams, the rocks, the hills that make us regard with fondness the place of our birth or the scene of our daily life; but it is also the memory of the events that have there occurred, and the men who have there lived and done worthy deeds. This is what gives its undying charm to every nook and corner of old England, old Ireland, and old Scotland, and binds their sons and daughters to the soil of their birth with such love and fidelity.

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead,

Who never to himself has said,

This is my own, my native land?"*

The more links and ties of homely native history we can establish and maintain in every locality, the more interest and pride we shall feel in our great Dominion; and the more likely will it be that our children and descendants in all future time will respond with a real patriotism to the poet's appeal.

Yes, without doubt, Champlain, more than two centuries and a half ago—namely, in 1615, when Shakspeare was still in the enjoyment of life and vigor at Stratford-on-Avon-Champlain, the chivalrous organizer of French Canada and founder of Quebec, traversed the waters of your Lake after accomplishing his wonderful second journey all the way up the St. Lawrence from Quebec-up nearly the whole length of the Ottawa- -across to Lake Nipissing, down the perilous leaps of French River, and thence through the long labyrinth of rocky isles which fringe the north-east shore of Georgian Bay.

Doubtless Champlain was to be seen pacing up and down in that beautiful sunny glade yonder, through which we passed just now, immediately after crossing the Narrows-pacing up and down full of care for the success of the daring expedition which he was about to undertake at the head of a few French soldiers and an undisciplined following of Huron braves, against the Iroquois in their own home, in the very heart of the present State of New York; passing for that purpose in a vast fleet of canoes the narrows of Lake Toronto, then across to Talbot River, and through the portages to Balsam Lake, and down the tedious series of the other back lakes, all the way to the River Trent and the Bay of Quinte;-an expedition,

* Quoted from Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto vi., stanza 1.

alas! in which he was doomed to undergo terrible disasters, and a sad loss of prestige with his Huron protégés.*

Many other brave and daring souls besides Champlain have, in times past, breathed—at all events for a while the pure and invigorating air of this distinguished spot. I will not dwell upon the Jesuit fathers, so many of whom, between the years 1633 and 1649, labored here, and suffered death here, not only at the hands of the invading Iroquois, but also at the hands of the Hurons themselves, who began to attribute illluck and disease to their presence amongst them. The history

of these intrepid members of the Order of St. Ignatius Loyola is well known. I need but name Jean de Brébeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier, Isaac Jogues, Francis Joseph Bressani-heroic characters every one of them.

And then there was La Salle, the dauntless, resolute seigneur or feudal lord of Fort Frontenac and its dependent territory. He certainly was here when on his expedition by this route to the Mississippi. His previous expedition with the same object in view, which he then failed to attain, had been by way of Lake Erie and the Ohio. But now he was successful. This was in the year 1680, when a famous comet was flaming in the sky, filling men's hearts with fear in Europe as well as here; although La Salle apparently did not thus superstitiously regard it, but simply made a note in his journal of its appearance. That La Salle visited these parts we learn from himself.

In 1764 a man of note passed this way, and made an interesting record of the fact-Alexander Henry, famous for perils undergone at Michilimackinac in connection with the Indian rising under Pontiac, and for his captivity among the Indians; and distinguished for great intrepidity, enterprise, and tact, as shown in his celebrated work, now a classic in our historical series, "Travels and Adventures in Canada, between the years 1760 and 1776.”

In 1836 Mrs. Jameson, the distinguished authoress, artcritic, and traveller, visited this spot. In her "Summer Rambles in Canada" (ii. 237), she says: "We went on a shooting and fishing excursion to Lake Couchiching, and to see the beautiful rapids of the River Severn, the outlet of these lakes to Lake Huron. If I had not exhausted all my superlatives of delight," she says, "I could be eloquent on the charms of this exquisite little lake and the wild beauty of the rapids." * Pronounce, pro-te-zhay-persons under the protection or care of another.

STUDIES IN SHAKSPEARE:-KING JOHN AND
HENRY VIII.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (b. 1837).

[The poet Swinburne has made valuable contributions to the highest class of literary criticism. His Essay on Blake (1867), Note on Charlotte Bronté, and A Study of Shakspeare (1880) are familiar to critics. To the new edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica his contributions already include a valuable monograph on Beaumont and Fletcher. These literary studies are pursued on original lines of thought; and though they are often poetry in prose, they are quite free from the rankness and extravagance that disfigure some of his poems. The following selection is from A Study of Shakspeare.]

In

On a lower degree only than this final and imperial work (Henry IV. and Henry V.), we find the two chronicle histories, King John and Henry VIII., which remain to be classed. style as in structure they bear witness of a power less perfect, a less impeccable hand. They have less of perceptible instinct, less of vivid and vigorous utterance; the breath of their inspiration is less continuous and less direct, the fashion of their eloquence is more deliberate and more prepense; there is more of study and structure apparent in their speech, and less in their general scheme of action. Of all Shakspeare's plays they are the most rhetorical there is more talk than song in them, less poetry than oratory; more finish than form, less movement than incident. Scene is laid upon scene, and event succeeds event, as stone might be laid on stone and story might succeed story in a building reared by mere might of human handiwork; not as in a city or temple whose walls had risen of themselves to the lyric breath and stroke of a greater than Amphion,* moulded out of music by no rule or line of mortal measure, with no sound of axe or anvil, but only of smitten strings, built by harp and not by hand.

The lordly structure of these poems is the work of a royal workman, full of masterdom and might, sublime in the state and strength of its many mansions, but less perfect in proportion and less aërial in build than the very highest fabrics fashioned after their own great will by the supreme architects of song. Of these plays, and of these alone among the maturer works of Shakspeare, it may be said that the best parts are discernible from the rest, divisible by analysis and separable by memory from the scenes which precede them or follow, and the characters which surround them or succeed. Constance and Katherine rise up into remembrance apart from their environment and above Amphion, in Greek mythology, the minstrel whose lyre charmed to their places the stones that formed the walls of Thebes.

*

it, stand clear in our minds of the crowded company with which the poet has begirt his central figures. In all other of his great tragic works—even in Hamlet, if we have grace and sense to read it aright and not awry-it is not of any single person or separate passage that we think when we speak of it; it is to the whole masterpiece that the mind turns at mention of its name. The one entire and perfect chrysolite of Othello is neither Othello nor Desdemona nor Iago, but each and all; the play of Hamlet is more than Hamlet himself, the poem even here is too great to be resumed in the person. But Constance is the jewel of King John, and Katherine is the crowning blossom of King Henry VIII.;-a funeral flower as of "marigolds on death-beds blowing;" an opal of as pure pure water as "tears of perfect moan,"* with fitful fire at its heart, ominous of evil and sorrow, set in a mourning band of jet on the fore front of the poem, that the brow so circled may, "like to a title leaf, foretell the nature of a tragic volume." Not, indeed, that without these the ground would in either case be barren; but that in either field our eye rests rather on these and other separate ears of wheat that overtop the ranks than on the waving width of the whole harvest at once. In the one play our memory turns next to the figures of Arthur and the Bastard; in the other to those of Wolsey and his king. The residue in either case is made up of outlines more lightly and slightly drawn. In two scenes the figure of King John rises indeed to the highest height even of Shakspearean tragedy: for the rest of the play, the lines of his character are cut no deeper, the features of his personality stand out in no sharper relief, than those of Eleanor or the French king; but the scene (act iii., scene 3) in which he tempts Hubert to the edge of the pit of hell sounds a deeper note and touches a subtler string in the tragic nature of man than had been struck by any poet, save Dante alone, since the reign of the Greek tragedians.

ACT III., SCENE 3.

Scene-Near Angiers.

Enter KING JOHN, ELINOR, ARTHUR,Ş HUBERT, || and Lords. Eli. Come hither, little kinsman; hark, a word.

K. John. Come hither, Hubert. O my gentle Hubert,

* Quoted from Milton, Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, 55.

+ Quoted from 2 Henry IV., act i., scene 1.

Widow of Henry II. and mother of King John.

§ Son of Geoffrey, elder brother of King John, and therefore rightful heir to the throne.

|| Hubert de Burgh, chamberlain to King John.