that our eyes really once beheld the traces on their countenances of their long and varied experiences, of their cares, and processes of thought; the traces left by the lapse of years, by times, rough and troublous, not merely heard of by the hearing of the ear, as existing across the Lakes or across the Seas, but encountered in their own persons, in their own land, at their own hearths; encountered and bravely struggled through:--that we were eye-witnesses of their cheerfulness and good courage after crisis upon crisis had thus passed over them; eye-witnesses again, too, of their earnest devotedness to the duties of calmer days, discharged ever honestly and well according to the beliefs and knowledge of the period, and without the realization, in many an instance, of the reach and vastness of the scheme of things which was being wrought out:--that with our own eyes we saw them, again and again, engaged within consecrated walls, in solemn acts which expressed, in spite of the vicissitudes which their destiny had brought with it, their unaffected faith in the unseen, and their living hope in relation to futurity. All this, we say, now seems like a dream of the night, or a mystic revelation of the scenes of a very distant period and in a very distant locality, rather than the recollections of a few short years spent on the spot where these pages are indited. The names, however, which we shall produce will have a sound of reality about them: they will be recognized as familiar, household words still perpetuated, or, at all events, still freshly remembered in the modern Toronto. From amongst the venerable heads and ancestral forms which recur to us, as we gaze down in imagination from the galleries of the old wooden St. James', of York, we will single out, in addition to those already spoken of, that of Mr. Ridout, sometimes Surveyor-General of the Province, father of a numerous progeny, and tribal head, so to speak, of more than one family of connections settled here, bearing the same name. He was a fine typical representative of the group to which our attention is directed. He was a perfect picture of a cheerful, benevolent-minded Englishman; of portly form, well advanced in years, his hair snowy-white naturally; his usual costume, of the antique style above described.