early gave promise of his future success. He was in 1855 called to the bar with honours. He then commenced one of the most prosperous professional careers which has been known in Canada, during which he was counsel for the Crown in several important cases. He was one of those chosen to defend Ministers when they were accused of violating the Independence of Parliament Act. "In fact," writes an authority, "since 1859, when he entered into partnership with the late James Paterson and Mr. Thomas Hodgins and commenced his practice at the bar, there has been scarcely a case of public importance in which he has not been retained, and the number of briefs he yearly held must have entailed an immense amount of labour, anxiety and thought. We believe no member of the profession in this country has held so many briefs as Mr. Harrison during the time he has been at the Bar. At many of the Assizes for York and the City of Toronto, Mr. Harrison has been retained in three-fourths of the criminal, and as large a proportion of the defended cases on the docket." During some terms he has moved no less than eighty rules. That with such an amount of work he should also have accomplished much in legal literature implies extraordinary system and capacity for labour.

He was made a Q. C. in 1867, and elected a bencher of the Law Society, in 1871. His last act as bencher will, I hope, bear fruit. He moved a resolutlon appointing a committee to consult with the Attorney-General and the Municipal Councils of York and Toronto, on the subject of building a new Court House for Assize and County business, on Osgoode Hall grounds. In 1865, he was elected Alderman, and as a Conservative represented West Toronto from 1867 to 1872.

Mr. Harrison attributes his success to perseverance, industry, and down right toil. These will take any man far; but there is a limit, beyond which certain minds aided by all the industry in the world cannot go. The power of hard work is a great gift-one indeed of the greatest, as it is one of the rarest—one without which, the highest genius can accomplish little, and which is seldom found unless in conjunction with high intellectual power. The legal history of two years proves that the Chief Justiceship was placed in no idle hands. When Mr. Harrison became Chief Justice,

DAWN OF CANADIAN ART.

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there were large arrears in his Court. To-day, there is no such evidence of supineness.

The Honourable Mr. Justice Doherty was born in the County Derry, in 1830. He came to this country with his father, He was educated at St. Hyacinthe and in Vermont, where having graduated, he went to the Lower Canadian Bar, and commenced a lucrative practice in Montreal.

Judge Drummond's name has already been mentioned in connexion with politics. Judge McCord, of Montreal; Judge McCord, of the Three Rivers; Judge Maguire, of Quebec ; George Dunbar, Q.C., of Quebec, an eloquent pleader-all illustrate the forensic talents of Irishmen.

Art began early to attract some attention. Ireland which had done so much in other walks for the infant nation was destined to give it the first impulse towards art. Michael Kane, and his Dublin wife, accompanied Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe to Western Canada. Having left the army, Michael settled in York, where his son was born in 1810. The little arrival was christened Paul. The child's growing mind could not fail to be influenced by the picturesque Indian figures still to be seen haunting the Don. Indian trails ran where King and Yonge streets are to-day. In the preface to his travels, Kane, in 1844, accounts for his resolve to devote himself to painting a series of studies of North American scenery and Indian life, by saying "the subject was one in which I felt a deep interest in my boyhood. I had been accustomed to see hundreds of Indians about my native village, then Little York, muddy and dirty, just struggling into existence; now the City of Toronto, bursting forth in all its energy and commercial strength."

Yet Little York was not a favourable place for a youth of genius to grow up. The District Grammar School was the only introduction into the world of knowledge, and thought, and art. Here there was Mr. Drury, an eccentric drawing master, who taught the future artist the elements of what was to be his ill-paid craft. His artistic bias was regarded in the light of want of application and distaste for steady industry. "The circumstances of the community' says Professor Wilson, "were indeed too frequently inimical to the fostering of settled

habits among its youth. Dr. Scadding has remarked, when describing the first years of the District Grammar School that 'during the time of the early settlements in this country, the sons of even the most respectable families were brought in contact with semi-barbarous characters. A sporting ramble through the woods, a fishing excursion on the waters, could not be undertaken without communication with Indians and half-breeds, and bad specimens of the French voyageurs. It was from such sources that a certain idea was derived which, as we remember was in great vogue among the more fractious of the lads at the school at York. The proposition circulated about, when anything ever went counter to their notions, always was to run away to the Nor'-West! What that process really involved, or what the Nor'-West precisely was, were things vaguely realized. A sort of savage land of Cocagne, a region of perfect freedom, among the Indians, was imagined, and to reach it, Lakes Huron and Superior were to be traversed.' In this way young Kane's mind was early familiarized with the idea of that expedition across the continent to green shores beyond the Rocky Mountains of which he has left so many memorials by means of his facile pencil and pen."

The "totems" which formed the sign manual of the Indian chiefs and their graphic picture writing on birch bark might by some be considered the dawn of Canadian art. A good deal of this art is still to be found emblazoned on the skin lodges of the prairies; while remains of pottery, copper, arms, and the like, show traces of a still higher culture, and no inconsiderable development of technical skill in a previous age. All this was, however, perhaps, rather the end of a phase of art in a decaying race, than the beginning of it in Canada.

We see from portraits and paintings which remain, executed in early days of European settlements, that art and artists, to some small extent, overflowed from other countries into Canada. The first notable cases where it took local colour, and men were inspirited to portray scenes and characters distinctively Canadian, are Krieghoff, in Lower and Paul Kane, in Upper Canada. Krieghoff devoted himself, especially, to winter scenes and the habitans, and it is due, in no small degree, to the profusion of the spirited sketches and paintings of this character which he threw off,

that Canada is looked upon, in England, as a land of perpetual snow; the inhabitants muffled up the year round in blanket-coats, hunting moose on snow-shoes, or tearing about in carioles.

Paul Kane had a truer feeling for art, and painted less for popularity and for the market. Consequently, while Krieghoff caught the fancy of his customers and made a fortune, Kane sold few pictures.

At an early age, Kane entered the employment of Mr Conger, who afterwards became Sheriff of Peterborough, but who was at this time engaged in the manufacture of household furniture. In ornamenting the furniture, scope was given to the boy's artistic genius, and some small recognition followed. But, we may be sure, no patron was found at that day. Our times are more advanced, yet no rich man has sought for himself the honour of securing an artistic training for Mr. Bengough, whose versatile genius is capable of the very highest things if he had only the requisite culture.* Still Kane obtained remuneration for his early efforts as an artist.

A prophet has no honour in the place where he is born or settles. When pearls are scattered at peoples' doors, they don't believe them to be pearls, unless the pearls are puffed by an organ of somebody interested in them. Kane, therefore, left Toronto for Cobourg, where he made enough of money to pay his way, and to start for the States, where he hoped to make sufficient to enable him to visit Europe, with the view of studying the works of the great masters.

Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar ?

His father promised to assist him. The young fellow was full of hope. Wandering along the margin of the broad Detroit river he felt the passion for beauty strong upon him. He would be no artist did he not dream along the lines of the great infirmity of noble minds, if his spirit did not glow at once at the thought of giving form to the ideal shapes which rounded all his life with ecstacy, and at the vision of renown, the child of splendid desirę. He was in his twenty-sixth year, and all the future was

Mr. Bengough is well known as the cartoonist of Grip, and a lecturer of power and humour.

bathed in hues of promise. He would roam through the halls of immortal work in the Louvre; he would stand in Imperial Rome amid all the glories of art. While he thus muses, a letter arrives from his father, telling him that difficulties would prevent his Italian excursion.

But he did not give up his purpose. He wandered from city to city, like the great Italian painters, when a Leo was on the throne of the Vatican, and another Medici ruled at Florence, and in the June of 1841, he sailed from Orleans for Marseilles. He spent four years in Europe, studying and copying the works of the great men of old, in Paris, at Geneva, at Milan, Verona, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Naples, Rome; the galleries of all he studied, in order that he might come back to be a true father to Canadian art. While in Naples, he was offered a passage in a Levantine cruiser, and thus he was enabled to visit the shores of Asia and Africa. He was on his way to Jerusalem with a party of Syrian explorers, when he and his friends were obliged to make for the coast in consequence of being deserted by their Arab guides. On his return he endured great hardships, but he landed on the African coast, and this consoled him, as he was able to boast he had been in every quarter of the globe.

He brought back with him a mind enlarged by observation, by communion with great artists, and well stored with pictures of famous scenes. He also brought copies of the most renowned pictures in the galleries of Venice, Florence, and Rome. An Irish artist whose friendship he had acquired while in the Imperial city, gave him an introduction to the Rev. Dr. Purcell, Bishop of Cincinnati. In this introduction, the artist urged the Bishop on no account to miss seeing Kane's admirable copy of Rafaelle's portrait of Pope Paul II. Among the paintings he copied, and of which he bore across the Atlantic copies, were Rafaelle's Madonna in the Pitti Palace, and his portrait of Pope Julius II; the portraits of Leonardo da Vinci, and of Rembrandt, painted by themselves, and which are among the glories of the Florentine gallery; of Murillo's Madonna, and Busato's portrait of Pope Gregory XVI.

One of his special friends, while he was in Italy, was Stewart Watson, a Scottish artist. They fraternized with that readiness with which Irishmen and Scotchmen proverbially fraternize when they