SUMMER RAMBLES IN CANADA. You shall Go forth upon your arduous task alone, PARACELSUS Port Talbot, July 10. "MAN is, properly speaking, based upon hope. He has no other possession but hope. This world of his is emphatically the place of hope:"* and more emphatically than of any other spot on the face of the globe, it is true of this new world of ours, in which I am now a traveller and a sojourner. This is the land of hope, of faith, ay, and of charity, for a man who hath not all three had better not come here; with them he may, by strength of his own right hand and trusting heart, achieve miracles : witness Colonel Talbot. Of the four days in which I have gone wandering and wondering up and down, let me now tell you something—all I cannot tell you; for the information I have gained, and the reflections and feelings which have passed through my mind, would fill a volume and I have little time for scribbling. And first of Colonel Talbot himself. This re. markable man is now about sixty-five, perhaps more, but he does not look so much. In spite of his rustic dress, his good-humoured, jovial, weatherbeaten face, and the primitive simplicity, not to say rudeness, of his dwelling, he has in his features, air, nd deportment, that something which stamps him gentleman. And that something which thirty-four years of solitude has not effaced, he derives, I sup. pose, from blood and birth, things of more conse. quence, when philosophically and philanthropically considered, than we are apt to allow. He must have been very handsome when young; his resemblance now to our royal family, particularly to the King, (William the Fourth,) is so very striking as to be something next to identity. Good-natured people have set themselves to account for this wonderful likeness in various ways, possible and impossible; but after a rigid comparison of dates and ages, and assuming all that latitude which scandal usually allows herself in these matters, it remains unac. countable, unless we suppose that the Talbots have, par la grace de Dieu, a family knack at resembling kings. You may remember that the extraordinary resemblance which his ancestor Dick Talbot, (Duke of Tyrconnel,) bore to Louis the Fourteenth, gave occasion to the happiest and most memorable repartee ever recorded in the chronicle of wit.* • As it is just possible that the reader may not have met with this anecdote, it is here repeated-perhaps for the thousandth Colonel Talbot came out to Upper Canada as aidede-camp to Governor Simcoe in 1793, and accompa. nied the governor on the first expedition he made to survey the western district, in search (as it was said) of an eligible site for the new capital he was then projecting. At this time the whole of the beautiful and fertile region situated between the lakes was a vast wilderness. It contained not one white settler, except along the borders, and on the coast opposite to Detroit: a few wandering tribes of Hu. rons and Chippewas, and the Six Nations settled on Grand River, were its only inhabitants. It was then that the idea of founding a colony took possession of Col. Talbot's mind, and became the ruling passion and sole interest of his future life. For this singular project, wise people have set them. selves to account much in the same manner as for his likeness to William the Fourth. That a man of noble birth, high in the army, young and handsome, and eminently qualified to shine in society, should voluntarily banish himself from all intercourse with the civilized world, and submit, not for a temporary frolic, but for long tedious years, to the most horrible privations of every kind, appeared too incompre. hensible to be attributed to any of the ordinary motives and feelings of a reasonable human being; so time: When Richard Talbot was sent ambassador to France, the king, struck by that likeness to himself which had excited the attention of his courtiers, addressed him on some occasion, "M. l'Ambassadeur, est-ce que madame votre mère a jamais été dans la cour du Roi mon père ?" Talbot replied with a low bow, "Non, sire-mais mon père y était !" they charitably set it down to motives and feelings very extraordinary indeed,—and then "they looked the lie they dared not speak." Others went no farther than to insinuate or assert that early in life he had met with a disappointment in love, which had turned his brain. I had always heard and read of him, as the "eccentric" Colonel Talbot. Of his eccen tricity I heard much more than of his benevolence, his invincible courage, his enthusiasm, his perseverance; but perhaps, according to the worldly no. menclature, these qualities come under the general head of "eccentricity," when devotion to a favourite object cannot possibly be referred to self-interest. On his return to England, he asked and obtained a grant of 100,000 acres of land along the shores of Lake Erie, on condition of placing a settler on every two hundred acres. He came out again in 1802, and took possession of his domain, in the heart of the wilderness. Of the life he led for the first six. teen years, and the difficulties and obstacles he en. countered, he drew, in his discourse with me, a strong, I might say a terrible, picture: and observe that it was not a life of wild wandering freedomthe life of an Indian hunter, which is said to be so fascinating that "no man who has ever followed it for any length of time, ever voluntarily returns to civilized society !"* Col. Talbot's life has been one of persevering, heroic self-devotion to the completion of a magnificent plan, laid down in the first instance, and followed up with unflinching tenacity of pur. • Dr. Dunlop. pose. For sixteen years he saw scarce a human being, except the few boors and blacks employed in clearing and logging his land: he himself assumed the blanket-coat and axe, slept upon the bare earth, cooked three meals a day for twenty woodsmen, cleaned his own boots, washed his own linen, milked his cows, churned the butter, and made and baked the bread. In this latter branch of household economy he became very expert, and still piques himself on it. To all these heterogeneous functions of sowing and reaping, felling and planting, frying, boiling, washing, wringing, brewing, and baking, he added. another, even more extraordinary ;-for many years he solemnized all the marriages in his district! While Europe was converted into a vast battle. field, an arena "Where distract ambition compassed And was encompass'd," and his brothers in arms, the young men who had begun the career of life with him, were reaping bloody laurels, to be gazetted in the list of killed and wounded, as heroes-then forgotten ;-Col. Talbot, a true hero after angther fashion, was encountering, amid the forest solitude, uncheered by sympathy, un. bribed by fame, enemies far more formidable, and earning a far purer, as well as a more real and lasting immortality. Besides natural obstacles, he met with others far more trying to his temper and patience. His continual quarrels with the successive governors, who were jealous of the independent power he exercised |