Let me give a few further particulars respecting Sir John Macdonald—perhaps the most abused, and the hardest working man, in all Canada. He has good Scotch blood in his veins. In the thirteenth century one of his ancestors looms up as Lord of South Kintyre and the Island of Islay. When the emigration movement to Canada began, a descendant of this Macdonald settled in Kingston, then the most important town in Upper Canada, and, next to Halifax and Quebec, the strongest fortress in British North America. He was accompanied by the future Premier, then a lad of five years of age. The boy was placed at the Royal Grammar School of Kingston, under the tuition of Dr. Wilson, a fellow of the University of Oxford, and subsequently under that of Mr. George Baxter. Meanwhile, his father moved to Quinté Bay, near the Lake of the Mountain, a lonely, wild country, in which the future Canadian statesman was often to be seen in the holiday time, with a fishing rod in his hand, with other companions as gay-hearted as himself. At that time he is described as having ‘a very intelligent and pleasing face, strange furry-looking hair, that curled in a dark mass, and a striking nose.’ Indeed, Sir John’s admirers see in him a resemblance to the late Lord Beaconsfield, and that there is a slight resemblance the most superficial observer must admit. As a lad, Sir John seems to have specially distinguished himself in mathematics. His master also, we are told, frequently exhibited the clean-kept books of young Macdonald to some careless student for emulation, and as often selected specimens of the neat penmanship of the boy, to put to shame some of the slovenly writers of his class.