Sir Edward Thornton is well known in this country as the English minister resident, and no man connected with the foreign legations is more respected and beloved by our people. He came here an untitled man, having served for many years in various diplomatic positions in different parts of the world. At the time Prince Arthur was in this country he came more immediately under the eye of his sovereign, and she was so pleased with the treatment of her son, and remembering at the same time her great obligations to him as a subject, that she knighted him, and now we have in the place of plain Mr. Thornton, “Sir Edward;” and well he becomes the title, not that he is any different from plain Mr. Thornton, for Nature made him a nobleman in the beginning, but the Queen, with her poor eyes, could not see it until a royal sprig was a guest under his hospitable roof. After all, the Queen only loaned him a title. It is buried when Sir Edward becomes ashes. His boy will be plain Mr. Thornton, and all the better for that. Minister Thornton, like the late Sir Frederick Bruce, has a most distinguished personal presence, owing to his majestic height and graceful manners. Then he retains that exquisite purity of complexion for which the English belles are celebrated, and our American climate, so conducive to parchment and wrinkles, labors upon his handsome face in vain. Sir John A. MacDonald is another of Her Majesty’s commissioners whose title dies with the man. Sir John’s father was a merchant in Kingston, Canada, who came to America when this son was only 6 years of age. When only 15 years old the latter left school and began the study of law. When 21 years old he was admitted to the bar; soon after he turned his attention to politics, and in 1844 was elected member for Kingston in the second parliament of United Canada. When two years and a half in Parliament he was appointed a member of the cabinet. During the time of our civil war there was agitation in regard to the dismemberment of Canada. Sir John was one of the strongest advocates for the union of the provinces. He was also a leading participant in the secularization of the church property, which dissolved the connection of church and state in Canada, and in the adjustment of the troublesome seigniorial rights. In one of his addresses he said: “The fraternal conflict now unhappily raging in the United States shows us the superiority of our institutions, and of the principle on which they are based. Long may that principle--the monarchical principle--prevail in this land. Let there be no ‘looking to Washington,’ as was threatened by a leading member of the opposition last session; but let the cry with the moderate party be: ‘Canada united as one province and under one sovereign.’”