THE SECRET OF GREATNESS. 183 Africa, and in India. Laurence Coughlan unfurled the Methodist banner in Newfoundland, in 1765, a year before Embury preached in New York. He was converted in Ireland, in 1753, and several of his letters to John Wesley are reproduced in Mr. Crook's book. On November 4th, 1772, he wrote a letter to Wesley, telling him what success he had met with during seven years of missionary labour. He had then two hundred communicants. He was, he said, a thorough Methodist. Nor did he believe his preaching would do much good without "discipline, which," he adds, "I consider, under God, has been the preserving of my society." The Church of England clergy were up in arms against him. He was prosecuted. He was accused of every conceivable crime in letters to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, by which he was employed. He went on unheeding. His enemies hired a physician to poison him. If I may parody Goldsmith—who came to poison remained to pray. The physician became a Methodist, and revealed the plot. A revival took place. Classes were formed. Persecution grew fiercer. He was summoned before the Governor. The Governor not only decided in his favour, but made him a Justice of the Peace. Master Laurence did not feel himself able to stand going over his vast parish solely by water, and was thinking of returning home or turning to some new field. But Wesley writes to him under date of August 29, 1768, in a manner which shows strong grasp of the foundation of all greatness, that the writer had imbibed the spirit of the early apostles, and had borrowed more than perhaps he suspected from the Roman Catholic Church. "Dear Laurence," he writes, "by various trains of Providence you have been led to the very place where God intended you should be. * In a short time how little will it signify whether we have lived in Summer Islands, or beneath 'The rage of Arctos, and eternal frost.' How soon will this dream of life be at an end? And when we are once landed in eternity, it will be all one whether we have spent our time on earth in a palace, or had not where to lay our head." Here Mr. Grumbler, be you Methodist or what else, is a phi losophy to calm your perturbed spirit, and give you something of dignity and greatness. Providence has sent you here to do your duty do it like a man. However strong your constitution you must die, and that soon, and then what do the vanities, the pomps, the little ambitions, the vile injustices of unjust men matter. How bracing it is in a world of money grabbers to read these great words. They come to us like a breeze of power from the hills of the Absolute. There is medicine for discontent, for worry, for effeminate longings after ease. What does it matter to you whether you lie hard or soft? And so our friend Coughlan laboured on in Newfoundland. When he went there, Newfoundland is described as sinking into heathenism. But his preaching wrought a great change. Coughlan's hands were soon strengthened by an Irish merchant, one of his converts, Arthur Twomey, and by the arrival in 1770, from Waterford, of John Stretton, son to John Stretton, of Limerick, "a prominent friend of Methodism in the early day." He built at Harbour Grace, the first Methodist chapel in the Lower Provinces. Mr. Crook also gives letters from Wesley to Stretton. This was in 1785, when Coughlan had returned to England to die. Wesley had sent one of his lieutenants to go through the heart of America, “visiting the flock," and "settling them on the New Testament plan, to which they all willingly and joyfully conform "; and he concludes in words of authority which sound, like those of a great captain: "Go on in the name of the Lord, and in the power of His might! You shall want no assistance that is in the power of your affectionate friend and brother-John Wesley." Keeping a promise made in the body of this letter, Wesley, at the ensuing conference, appointed an Irishman as a missionary to Newfoundland. In 1804, Ireland gave Newfoundland another missionary in the person of John Remington, and later on sent Samuel Ellis and Samuel McDowell. About twenty years ago everybody was reading a book which had a curious fascination for my boyish fancy, though I could not understand the character portrayed, half soldier half religious enthusiast. It was a book which especially laid hold of the minds of religious women. As the Athenian got tired of hearing Aristides called the Just, so some lads in those days got tired of hear HEDLEY VICARS. EDUCATION OF U. E'S. 185 ing Hedley Vicars "cracked up." Curiously enough, his name is connected with Newfoundland, with Canada, as well as with Ireland, and therefore he has a double claim to be briefly dwelt on here. Captain Vicars, of the Royal Engineers, then stationed at St. John's, was induced to attend the preaching of a Methodist, the Rev. George Cubitt. From being trifling and sceptical, he became earnest and religious. Dressed in full uniform, he used to preach. He fell in love with a fair young Methodist. They were married. Captain Hedley Vicars, of the 97th, was the fruit of this union. Many years after this, Captain Vicars, with his Newfoundland wife, resided at Mullingar, Westmeath, where he, his wife and son were accustomed to attend the Methodist Church. In New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward, the Methodists made their mark, nor could one conceive better missionaries for a new country than the strict followers of Wesley. As missionaries they take rank side by side with the Jesuits, in self-denial, in zeal, in energy, and in persuasiveness; though they have not the same imposing air of turning their back on the world, and giving up life, and love to go at a sombre, cold, cheerless, perilous, obscure achievement, with a help-meet who herself frequently makes no bad missionary. And what of the work of education in those early days? The majority of the refugees, according to Dr. Canniff, possessed but a limited education. The culture of a small number was good, but, he says, the greater portion of Loyalists from the colonies in revolt "had not enjoyed opportunities for even a common education." Where parents are uneducated and in the midst of the uneducated, they do not care to educate their children. Mr. Ruttan said he picked up what knowledge he had acquired from his mother. But school teaching was gradually introduced. The first school teachers were discharged soldiers, and generally Irish. We have seen how the Rev. John Stuart set up a seminary. But when he settled at Cataraqui, he said: "The greatest inconvenience I feel here is that there is no school for our boys." The following year he opened a school himself. Another pioneer teacher at Kingston, was Donevan. Colonel Clark, of Dalhousie, received part of his education at Kingston, and he speaks of three Irishmen, Myers, Blaney, and Michael, as teachers. Two other pedagogues, well re membered, are Edward O'Reily and McCormick, who seemed to think boys could be made to learn only in the way one of George Eliot's characters declares babies can be made good. Later on Mr. Whelan taught. In 1799, Mr. Strachan, who was afterwards to occupy so great a place in the history of Canada, arrived here from Scotland. Dr. Chalmers, as has been the case with many another Scotchman since, was invited to come. But Chalmers, though his greatness was not yet known to the world, and perhaps, only half suspected by himself, refused, and in refusing, suggested the name of his friend, Strachan, who came to carry out a scheme of education projected by Simcoe. But by the time he arrived, Simcoe had been recalled. However, in the following year, a school was established by the Hon. R. Cartwright for his sons, having Mr. Strachan for teacher, who had the privilege of taking ten other scholars at £10. each, per annum. Three years afterwards, Mr. Strachan removed to Cornwall. In those early years he did a great work in imparting the higher education and training future statesmen. "Antiquarian research," says Professor Wilson, in his interesting Essay, calling attention to Dr. Scadding's "Toronto of Old," "seems peculiarly out of place in a new colony, and is lucky if it escapes the sneer of the busy trader in his zeal for wealth and material progress. Nevertheless," he continues, "to one gifted with the slightest powers of fancy, there is something fascinating in the attempt to recall the infancy of comparatively modern cities." And surely it is not less fascinating, while fraught with instructtive lessons, to recall the early stages and struggles of a community and to point the sources whence it drew mental and moral food, more precious than any which even the bountiful bosom of our mother, the earth, can yield. We have seen Colonel Simcoe choose Toronto for his capital, when "dense and trackless forests lined the margin of the lake, and reflected their inverted images in its glassy surface," and gave the shelter of luxuriant foliage to the wigwam of the Mississaugas. On the heights above the Don, he erected the first Gov * Canadian Monthly, August, 1873. CANADA'S TRUE LAUREATE. 187 the name of ernment House, a rustic building, to which he gave Castle Frank. He was recalled. Meanwhile, a house was erected here and a house there, and the first white child born in the infant city was of Irish parents, Edward Simcoe Wright, who afterwards kept an inn known as the Greenland Fishery, at the foot of John Street. Wright is still alive, and must be a very old man, for he was born of parents in the service of General Simcoe, who stood godfather to him, and from whom he received his second name. If we suppose him to have been born the year prior to the Governor's recall, he would now be eighty-two. Among the Irish families, who came in to help to lay the moral and material foundation of Toronto was that of Mr. Joseph Rogers. They came from Cookstown, County Tyrone. Mr. Rogers carried on the business of a furrier in King Street, and his descendants are in the same line of business to-day, and, like him, strong in all the points which make good, useful citizens. At an early period an Irishman visited, or rather flitted by, our shores, who made a brief stay lower down the St. Lawrence, but whose name such is the power of genius-is inextricably bound up with the thought and history of Canada. Nor is it possible to write about Toronto's early days without mentioning his name and musing over his words. Indeed, Moore is not only the laureate of Ireland, but of Canada. His "Canadian Boat Song" has as yet found no successful rival. Dr. Scadding and Dr. Wilson declare that it has "become alike in words and air a national anthem for the Dominion." You cannot produce poetry as you produce fat oxen, by offering a prize. The verses of Moore are known to every Canadian school-boy, and echo every summer along our lakes and rivers. Sometimes the voice is that of the captain of a raft, sometimes the notes are those of a lady who would be equal to a selection from Mozart. "It could scarcely be heard," says Dr. Wilson, "by any Canadian wanderer, when far away among strangers, without a thrill as tender and acute as ever the Ranz des Vaches' awoke on the ear of the exiled Switzer, or Lochaber No More,' on that of the Highlander languishing for his native glen."* In an epistle written to his coun * Moore wrote the words to an air sung frequently by the boatmen. In descending the river from Kingston to Montreal the wind was so unfavourable that they were ob |