curious essays, extracted from the most celebrated authors, blending philosophy with politics, history, &c.' The conductors also pledged themselves to give no place in the paper to 'party prejudices and private scandal'--a pledge better kept than such promises are generally. There was a very slender allowance of news from Riga, St. Petersburg, London, New York and Philadelphia; but there was one ominous item, that Parliament was about imposing taxes on the Colonies, though they were without representation in that Parliament. The latest English news was to the 11th April; the latest American to the 7th May. Only two advertisements appeared--one of a general store, of dry goods, groceries, hardware, all the _olla podrida_ necessary in those days; the other from the Honourable Commissioner of Customs, warning the public against making compositions for duties under the Imperial Act. This sheet, for some years, had no influence on public opinion; for it continued to be a mere bald summary of news, without comment on political events. Indeed, when it was first issued, the time was unfavourable for political discussion, as Quebec had only just become an English possession, and the whole country was lying torpid under the military administration of General Murray. It is, however, a fact not very generally known even yet, except to a few antiquarians, that there was a small sheet published in British America, called the Halifax _Gazette_ [Footnote: In a letter of Secretary Cotterell, written in 1754, to Captain Floyer, at Piziquid (Windsor), he refers to M. Dandin, a priest in one of the Acadian settlements: 'If he chooses to play _bel esprit_ in the Halifax _Gazette_, he may communicate his matter to the printer as soon as he pleases, as he will not print it without showing it to me.--See Murdoch's History of Nova Scotia, vol. 2, p. 234] just twelve years before the appearance of the Quebec paper. From 1769 we commence to find regular mention of the Nova Scotia _Gazette and Weekly Chronicle_, published on Sackville Street by A. Fleury, who also printed the first Almanac in Canada, in 1774. One of the first newspapers published in the Maritime Provinces was the _Royal Gazette and New Brunswick Advertiser_, which appeared in 1785 in St. John, just founded by the American Loyalists. The first paper appeared in Upper Canada on the establishment of Parliamentary Government, and was published by Louis Roy, at Newark, on the 18th April, 1793, under the title of _The Upper Canada Gazette, or the American Oracle_. The sheet was in folio, 15 by 9-1/2 inches, of coarse, but durable paper--not a characteristic, certainly, of our great newspapers now-a-days, of which the material is very flimsy; the impression was fairly executed; the price was three dollars a year. In 1794, the form was changed to a quarto, and one Tiffany had become the proprietor. When the _Gazette_ was removed to York, in 1800, with all the Government offices, the Messrs. Tiffany