"Hence these nine colleges were nurseries of virtue, intelligence, liberality and patriotism, as well as of learning; so that when the revolution began, scores of enlightened leaders, both in council and in the field (and on both sides), were found among their graduates. The influence of academic culture may be distinctly traced in the formation of the Constitution of the United States, and in the political writings of Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Munroe, and many other leading statesman of the period. A careful student of American politics has remarked that nothing more strikingly indicates the influence of the education given at Harvard, 'than the masterly manner in which difficult problems of law and government were handled by those who had received their instruction only from that source.'"--Pages 215, 216. THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST PERIOD IN UPPER CANADA. We might pursue this branch of our subject further, were it desirable. But that is not necessary. Our object was to show that to British Colonial foresight, zeal, and self-sacrifice, was due, not only the foundation of the best colleges and universities on the continent, but the introduction and diffusion of the principle of "free and universal education for the masses of the people." This we have done on the authority of American writers themselves. We might multiply examples on the subject; but the fact is already sufficiently established. We should rather seek to draw lessons of instruction from the noble example of the devotion to education on the part of our British colonial progenitors, whose descendants have shed such a lustre of heroic self-sacrifice and patriotism on the history and exploits of the United Empire Loyalists of the thirteen colonies. To the Americans they have left a rich legacy from the colonial times in such universities as Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton--of which the descendants of the expatriated Loyalists, no less than those of the victorious revolutionists, are so justly proud. Let us, as worthy representatives of these clear-headed and far-seeing Loyalists, bequeath to our children as noble a heritage as the fathers of the founders of this Province did to New England, and indeed to the whole Republic. Trained in such an educational school, and animated with the educational zeal of these old colonial times, the "United Empire Loyalists" brought with them into Canada their love for education and their devotion to the sovereign. In order to keep up the historical sequence of this Retrospect, I shall now refer to the early beginning of Educational life in Upper Canada, and then take up the thread of the narrative at the point where the educational forces--afterwards directed by the Rev. Dr. Strachan and the Rev. Dr. Ryerson--took practical form and shape. (See page 59.) GOVERNOR SIMCOE'S EDUCATIONAL VIEWS IN 1795.