repairing it; and if this report should ever cross the ocean and be read by those of whom it speaks, I hope, not with too great freedom, they will perhaps accept the assurance that, while I desired to appreciate, I was bound, above all, to be true; and that even where I could not wholly praise) I never meant to blame. Honest criticism is not hostility." * * * * * In a letter addressed to Dr. Ryerson in 1875, the Bishop says:-- "I take it very kindly in you that you remember an old acquaintance, and I have read with interest your last report. I am glad to observe progress in the old lines almost everywhere. I was flattered also to find that some words of mine, written in 1865, are thought worthy of being quoted.... It is pleasant to find a public servant now in the thirty-second year of his incumbency, still so hopeful and so vigorous. Few men have lived a more useful or active life than you, and your highest reward must be to look back upon what you have been permitted to achieve." Speaking of the character of Dr. Ryerson's educational work and of the way in which he met difficulties in accomplishing it, Mr. J. Antisell Allen, of Kingston, in his paper on "_Dr. Ryerson, a Review and a Study_," says:-- "There is hardly a foot-length of our civilization on which he has not left his mark. For those who believe that, on the grounds of expediency, a government is justified in interfering with the ordinary working of the great human life-struggle, and so, in taking one man's money to benefit another man's children, that is to a majority so overwhelming as to come almost under the category of universal, as to be every one's belief--what system of general education can recommend itself more fully, or work more smoothly, than does his? In his struggles in this direction, neither seduced by friends, nor cowed by enemies, nor damped in his ardour by the vastness of the undertaking--turning neither to the right hand nor to the left--he has raised to himself a "_monumentum perennius ære_," and has bequeathed to us and posterity a system of public and high school education second to none anywhere, and, making some deduction for possible mistakes incident to our weak humanity, a system almost as perfect as we in this generation are perhaps capable of generally acquiescing in." In 1867 Dr. Ryerson made his fourth and final educational tour in Europe and America. On his return he submitted to the Government a highly valuable "Special Report on the Systems and State of Popular Education in the several countries in Europe and the United States of America, with practical suggestions for the improvement of public instruction in Upper Canada." He also made a separate and interesting "Report on the Institutions for the Deaf and Dumb in various countries." A few years afterwards he had the happiness of seeing institutions of a similar kind in successful operation in this Province.