Scotia, who died in 1807, by his wife Maria, daughter of Captain Thomas Walker. He is one of a family consisting in all of five daughters and two sons; and his elder brother, Lieutenant Thomas Gregory Townsend Williams, of the Royal Artillery, served under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula and in France, and died after the combat at New Orleans, in 1814. He was born in Novs Scotia in December, 1800, and at an early age was placed in the Royal Academy at Woolwich, through the interest of the late Duke of Kent. In 1825, having passed through the regular course of study with credit, he was gazetted to a second lieutenancy in the Royal Artillery, and obtained his promotion to the rank of first i lieutenant in 1827, and to that of captain in 1840.

From a speech delivered by Earl Granville in the House of Lords in May, 1856, in proposing the grant of a pension of £1,000 to the subject of this memoir, we gather that Lieutenant Williams, whilst still very young, was sent out on special service to act as an engineer in Ceylon, where he remained during nine years of active and constant employment. He subsequently spent some time in Turkey, previous to 1843, when we find him promoted to the rank of brevet-major for his military services, and commissioned by the Earl of Aberdeen, then secretary of state for foreign affairs. to act on behalf of England in concert with our ambassador ai Constantinople and the British minister at Ispahan, in settling the disputed limits of the Persian and Turkish territories in Asia-3 task which made large demands on his judgment and diplomatic ability, and was ultimately accomplished by him in such a way as to obtain the commendation of his superiors, and to mark him out as a proper person for further employment of a similar kind. We have heard that out of the nine years during which the settlement of the Turkish frontier engaged his attention, he spent no less than four years under a canvas tent, aud suffered severely in health and person from the feverish character of the climate and the frequent attacks of robbers.

Upon the establishment of a friendly understanding between the Court of St. James and the Ottoman Porte, the late Sir Hussey Vivian, who at that time was master-general of the ordnance. selected Major Williams for the post of instructor in artillery practice to the Turkish army; and we are only repeating the opinion publicly expressed by Earl Granville when we state that, under his training, the Mussulmen rapidly improved in that branch of military education.

In May, 1847, we find Major Williams taking a prominent part in the conferences at Erzeroum, which resulted in the well-known treaty signed there between England and the plenipotentiaries of Turkey and Persia. For his services on this occasion, which involved many delicate and difficult points, he was promoted to the brevet rank of lieutenant-colonel.

This rank he held at the time when the Russian war broke out, and when his eastern experience pointed him out as one of those officers whose talents and energies could be turned to good account. Lord Clarendon, who at that date held the seals of the foreign office, at once selected Colonel Williams as the fittest man for the post of her Majesty's commissioner at head quarters with the Turkish forces, with the rank of a brigadier-general. His appointment was dated in July, 1854: early in the following September he reached Erzeroum, and before the close of the month proceeded onward to Kars-a city whose name he was destined to render famous through all time in the annals of English military exploits.

To use the emphatic and impressive term of Lord Granville, certain "painful events" arose in the course of the year, during which General Williams held the command of Kars, on which severe comments were passed by the daily papers and society at large. These "painful events," however, upon being thoroughly. sifted, resolved themselves into one notorious fact, that although the gallant general had repeatedly sent official information to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, our ambassador at Constantinople, that the force at his disposal was too weak to be able to hold permanent possession of the place, his excellency, from private pique or personal jealousy, chose to turn a deaf car to his requests for further supplies of men and money, and refused to send assistance until it was too late to be of any avail. But we are anticipating events.

With the assistance of Colonel Teesdale, Colonel Atwell Lake (known to the Russians as the English Todtleben), and General Kmety, General Williams was enabled to render the petty fortification of Kars almost impregnable. On September 29th, 1855, after the town had been invested for four months by Mouravieff, General Williams resolved to give his besiegers battle, and, after a sanguinary conflict of eight hours' duration, defeated a much larger force than his own, on the heights which rise above Kars. This victory at once raised General Williams into note as the "hero of Kars" he was almost immediately afterwards gazetted a knight commander of the Bath; whilst the Sultan honored him with the rank of mushir, or full general, in the Turkish service.

Still, however, with the scanty force at his disposal, General Williams was unable to force Mouravieff to raise the siege, as he hoped to have been able to do had he been properly seconded by the haughty ambassador at Constantinople. It will be enough to state here that the siege was pressed on more closely than ever; and as week after week no reinforcements arrived, and the garrison army (for so we ought, perhaps, to call it), began to die from hunger. At length, on the 14th November, the gallant defenders of Kars were forced to capitulate and surrender their swords to General Mouravieff as prisoners of war, Lord Stratford thus

robbing the dearly bought victory of all its fruits, and the British arms of everything but the prestige of bravery and valor which they had gained upon the heights above Kars In the words of a contemporary, "hunger and an Armenian winter amply seconded the jealousy and haughty indifference of the British ambassador." Together with his comrades and colleagues-Colonels Lake, Teesdale, and Thompson-General Williams was taken as a prisoner to Moscow, and afterwards to St. Petersburgh, where they were all treated honorably and respectfully, as was their due. Peace was concluded early in the following year between England and Russia; and it was not without cause suspected that Kars was voluntarily and deliberately sacrificed by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe in order to compensate Russia for the loss of Sebastopol. The whole matter was freely canvassed in Parliament at the time; but the ministry contrived to throw dust in the eyes of the people. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was visited with no official censure or rebuke; and the nation at large was forced to conclude that whole armies and their generals are but blind chessmen or draughtsmen in the hands of their rulers, who play a fearful game of hazard, for the conduct of which they are responsible to none.

Early in the following month of May (1856) General Williams and his friends landed once more upon the shores of England. On the 10th of that month a royal message was sent to both houses of Parliament recommending the House of Commons to enable her Majesty to make provision for securing to Sir W. F. Williams a pension of £1,000 a-year for the term of his natural life, in acknowledgment of his services, which we have already specified in detail. In addition to this tangible reward, General Williams was placed as a major-general on the fixed establishment, and gazetted to a baronetcy, as Sir William Fenwick Williams of Kars. In the following July he was appointed commander of Woolwich garrison, and returned M.P. for the Borough of Calne, positions which he vacated in 1858, to accept that of commander-in-chief of the forces in British North America, thus returning to his native country in one of the highest positions his sovereign could appoint him to. From October 12, 1860, to January 22, 1861, he administered the government of Canada during the absence of the governor general (Sir E. W. Head), and during the short time he held that high appointment, he performed the arduous duties with a zeal and activity which many governors would do well to imitate. The bestowal of a baronetcy on the gallant general may be considered a greater compliment from the fact that, with the exception of the titles conferred on Admiral Lyons and General Sir John Burgoyne, it is the only hereditary dignity which was given in consequence of the Russian war, though between thirty and forty individuals reaped the less substantial prizes of the order of the Bath.

In speaking of General Williams, it was remarked by Lord Granville that most of the conditions of a first-rate general were found in him. "A well known ancient historian," said the noble lord, "lays down that a general must not only be a good engineer, a good geographer, a good manager of persons, well acquainted with human nature, and something of a statesman, but must also exhibit in himself a power of descending with ease into little things, and to become, if necessary, his own commissary and his own clerk. These conditions were found in an eminent degree in Sir W. F. Williams; and indeed there is only one point in which he has not shown the highest qualities of a general, and that is in not having as yet had an opportunity afforded him of showing his powers of manoeuvring a large force upon the field," which we might add he may perhaps have before he vacates his command in this country, and prove himself to be "the competent general," which we Canadians and the people of England believe him to be, notwithstanding the late attacks made upon him in a London journal.

General Williams is a thorough English gentleman; he has proved himself such in his every action in this country, and, in fact, in his every action throughout life. We can hardly say more, except that here in Canada he is universally esteemed, and held by all classes in the highest respect. This feeling was evinced in a great measure during the recent visit of the heir apparent, when in many places the general was as much an object of the people's enthusiasm as our future king. On his first visit to America, in 1858, he was the recipient of innumerable demonstrations and dinners by the public bodies in all the cities and towns in British America.

He has also been rewarded by the Sultan of Turkey with the order of the Medjidie of the first class, and has been presented with the freedom of the city of London, accompanied by the gift of a splendid sword. He was also created an honorary D.C.L. of Oxford, at the annual commemoration in 1856.

J. T. MACKENZIE, Esq., M.D., M.R.C.

A NATIVE of Canada, having been born we believe in Toronto, C.W. He commenced the study of medicine in July, 1852, with the late Dr. John King, and after attending Toronto college, where he carried off many valuable prizes, and took the degree of

M.B., he went to England, and entered at Guy's Hospital, London, where he passed and received the diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Soon after he was placed in medical charge of a detachment of her Majesty's troops on the voyage to India. Immediately on the troops being landed in India, he was placed in medical charge of the Hon. East India Co.'s invalids bound for England. He received the highest encomiums for both services, and was allowed to present himself for the commission of surgeon in the company's service. At the East India House, in July, 1858, after six days examination of thirty-nine candidates, his name was placed No. 2 on the first class, No. 1 being one of the teachers in Guy's Hospital, so that Mr. Mackenzie took precedence of thirty-seven of the picked men of Edinburgh, Dublin and London. He got his commission and (an unusual favor) his choice of Presidency, and a present of a free overland passage to India, equal to £105 sterling. Dr. Mackenzie had no patronage, but his own abilities, and is the first medical student from Canada who has ever competed for the commission of the H.E.I.C.

MRS. MOODIE.

SUSANNA MOODIE was born on the 6th of December, 1803. She is the sixth daughter of the late Thomas Strickland, Esquire, of Beydon Hall, Suffolk, England. This family is, indeed, a most talented one; out of six daughters five are more or less celebrated as writers for the press. Elizabeth, the eldest, has written for and still conducts, several well known magazines in London, (G.B.) although her name never appears to the public. Agnes, who is the best known, principally through her many and masterly historical works and novels. Jane Margaret, who bears a reputation for her religious works, although in her earlier days she wrote tales and poetical pieces to suit the times. She lately published a history of Rome*; then comes Mrs. Traill, of whom we speak elsewhere, and last but not least, Mrs. Moodie, the subject of this notice. Another member of this family is Colonel Strickland, of Peterborough, C. W., who has resided in the province since his boyhood, and obtained his rank through serving in our militia during the rebellion.

Mrs. Moodie lost her father at the early age of thirteen, by whom she was educated. Mr. Strickland had been a man of some "Rome, Regal and Republican."