In his Autobiography Mr. Galt refers to this notice of himself in the _Canadian Literary Magazine_, especially in respect to an intimation given therein that contemporaries at York accused him of playing "Captain Grand" occasionally, and "looking down on the inhabitants of Upper Canada." He does not affect to say that it was not so; he even rather unamiably adds: "The fact is, I never thought about them [_i. e._, these inhabitants], unless to notice some ludicrous peculiarity of individuals." The same tone is assumed when recording the locally famous entertainment, given by himself and Lady Willis, as above described. Having received a hint that the colonelcy of a militia regiment might possibly be offered him, he says: "This information was unequivocally acceptable; and accordingly," he continues, "I resolved to change my recluseness into something more cordial towards the general inhabitants of York. I therefore directed one of the clerks [the gentleman who figured as Rizzio,] to whom I thought the task might be agreeable, to make arrangements for giving a general Fancy Ball to all my acquaintance, and the principal inhabitants. I could not be troubled," he observes, "with the details myself, but exhorted him to make the invitations as numerous as possible." In extenuation of his evident moodiness of mind, it is to be observed that his quarters at York were very uncomfortable. "The reader is probably acquainted," he says in his Autobiography, "with the manner of living in the American hotels, but without experience he can have no right notion of what in those days (1827,) was the condition of the best tavern in York. It was a mean two-storey house; the landlord, however, [this was Mr. Frank,] did," he says, "all in his power to mitigate the afflictions with which such a domicile was quaking, to one accustomed to quiet." Such an impression had his unfortunate accommodation at York made on him, that, in another place, when endeavouring to describe Dover, in Kent, as a dull place, we have him venturing to employ such extravagant language as this: "Everybody who has been at Dover knows that it is one of the vilest [hypochondriacal] haunts on the face of the earth, except Little York in Upper Canada." We notice in Leigh Hunt's _London Journal_ for June, 1834, some verses entitled "Friends and Boyhood," written by Mr. Galt, in sickness. They will not sound out of place in a paper of early reminiscences: "Talk not of years! 'twas yesterday We chased the hoop together, And for the plover's speckled egg We waded through the heather. "The green is gay where gowans grow, 'Tis Saturday--oh! come, Hark! hear ye not our mother's voice, The earth?--she calls us home. "Have we not found that fortune's chase For glory or for treasure, Unlike the rolling circle's race, Was pastime, without pleasure?