closely cut, is rather inclined to curl--evidently would curl if it were a
little longer. Below the medallion is a mural tablet bearing the following
inscription:
"Sacred to the memory of John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant-General in the
army, and Colonel in the 22nd Regiment of Foot, who died on the 25th day
of October, 1806, aged 54. In whose life and character the virtues of the
hero, the patriot, and the Christian were so eminently conspicuous, that it
may justly be said, he served his King and his country with a zeal exceeded
only by his piety towards God."
On the right of the inscription is depicted the figure of an Indian warrior
with a conspicuous scalp-lock. On the left is the figure of a veteran
of the Queen's Rangers. To the well-read spectator, the portrait stands
confessed as the likeness of the first Governor of Upper Canada, and the
founder of the Town of York.
Monumental inscriptions, as a rule, are not the most trustworthy
authorities whereby one may be enabled to form an unprejudiced estimate of
the moral and intellectual qualities of "those who have gone before." In
visiting any of the noteworthy resting-places of the illustrious dead,
either in the old world or the new, we are not seldom astonished upon
reading the sculptured testimony of the survivors, to find that "'tis still
the best that leave us." One may well wonder, with the Arch-Cynic, where
the bones of all the _sinners_ are deposited. In the case of Governor
Simcoe, however, there is much to be said in the way of just commendation,
and the inscription is not so nauseously fulsome us to excite disgust.
Toronto's citizens, especially, should take pleasure in doing honour to
his memory. But for him, the capital of the Province would not have been
established here, and the site of the city might long have remained the
primitive swamp which it was when his eyes first beheld it on the morning
of the 4th of May, 1793.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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