I am fully sensible that the United States possesses estimable citizens in great numbers, who feel, and lament more than anybody else, the flagrant abuses of her free institutions. But do they exercise any controlling voice in elections? Do they even hope to influence the popular vote? They tell us themselves that they are powerless. And so--we have only to wish them a fairer prospect; and to pray that Canada may escape the inevitable Nemesis that attends upon great national faults such as theirs. CHAPTER XXVII. A CONFIRMED TORY. My good friend and host, Henry Cook Todd, was one of the most uncompromising Tories I ever met with. He might have sat for the portrait of Mr. Grimwig in "Oliver Twist." Like that celebrated old gentleman, "his bark was aye waur than his bite." He would pour out a torrent of scorn and sarcasm upon some luckless object of his indignation, public or private; and, having exhausted the full vials of his wrath, would end with some kind act toward, perhaps, the very person he had been anathematizing, and subside into an amiable mood of compassion for the weaknesses of erring mankind generally. He was a graduate of the University of Oxford, and afterwards had charge of a large private school in one of the English counties. Having inherited and acquired a moderate competency, he retired into private life; but later on he lost by the failure of companies wherein his savings had been invested. He then commenced business as a bookseller, did not succeed, and finally decided, at the persuasion of his wife's brother, Mr. William P. Patrick, of Toronto, to emigrate to Canada. Having first satisfied himself of the prudence of the step, by a tour in the United States and Canada, he sent for his family, who arrived here in 1833. His two sons, Alfred and Alpheus, got the full benefit of their father's classical attainments, and were kept closely to their studies. At an early age, their uncle Patrick took charge of their interests, and placed them about him in the Legislative Assembly, where I recollect to have seen one or both of them, in the capacity of pages, on the floor of the House. From that lowly position, step by step, they worked their way, as we have seen, to the very summit of their respective departments. Mr. Todd was also an accomplished amateur artist, and drew exquisitely. An etching of the interior of Winchester Cathedral, by him, I have never seen surpassed. He was fond of retirement and of antiquarian reading, and, while engaged in some learned philological investigation, would shut himself up in his peculiar sanctum and remain invisible for days, even to his own family. Between the years 1833 and 1840, Mr. Todd published a book, entitled "Notes on Canada and the United States," and I cannot better illustrate his peculiar habits of thought, and mode of expressing them, than by quoting two or three brief passages from that work, and from "Addenda" which I printed for him myself, in 1840: