While Mr. Mortimer’s friends did not approve of his expatriating himself and family, so some of them, who visited him in Canada, were by no means convinced of his having improved on his lot and position in life by his change of country. The Rev. B. Luckock was one of these, who was so struck with the inferiority of everything which he saw, that he afterwards wrote to him in no very measured terms of his dislike and almost detestation of what he called his wretched situation. These condoling and sympathizing notes produced no echo in the mind of Mr. Mortimer, and he wrote to his friend in the following playful terms, united to strains of piety and seriousness, very expressive of his own satisfaction with the change which he had made:— “Both your letters found me at Thornhill, and from the same miserable and deserted place, I date, as you will perceive, my present letter. It is difficult to determine what class of feelings we should indulge in at the accumulated epithets of loathing and abhorrence with which you speak of our delightfully happy sojourn; our disposition, however, to merriment prevailed, and we all laughed most heartily at your intemperate and ill-timed abusings, so completely and so pleasantly had the whole class of our own feelings and circumstances been changed since your visit to that anything but “happy valley.” I need not detail to you the various incidents which, through the kind providence of our God, have tended both to fix our steps and to settle our minds; the hundreds of miles which were previously travelled—the ineligibility of every spot and every abode in some important particular—the striking Providence which put some unexpected and final stop to our negotiations in each of the matters on which we were disposed to venture—the altered feeling and conduct discovered by my people, when they perceived me fully resolved to leave—their solicitations, accompanied with proffered, though not accepted, pecuniary liberality to remain among them—the erection of a large, commodious, and tasty, not to say beautiful, house, on the few acres of my own, near the church, which I had some time before purchased—the settling of a most esteemed, and delightful, intelligent, well-educated, Christian family, within a few stones’ throw of our residence—and, finally, the induction and installing of the long unbeneficed curate into that most lucrative and honourable piece of preferment, “the Rectory of Thornhill.” Happy consummation of the most ambitious wishes, or only to be credited by the envied and enviable dignitaries of our Church, of which “I am proud to think” that my valued and respected friend is one! But I wander; there, then, we are at Thornhill; but, through God’s mercy, under circumstances of great comfort, much, very much, indeed, which calls