Toronto of Old: Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of OntarioScadding, Henry
History
Toronto of Old: Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario
Scadding, Henry
Toronto (Ont.) -- Description and travel; Toronto (Ont.) -- History
Furthermore; in regard to our honoured and beloved master, Dr. Phillips
himself; there is this advantage to be named as enjoyed by those whose
lot it was, in this new region, to pass a portion of their impressible
youth in the society of such a character: it furnished them with a
visible concrete illustration of much that otherwise would have been a
vague abstraction in the pictures of English society set before the
fancy in the _Spectator_, for instance, or Boswell's _Johnson_, and
other standard literary productions of a century ago. As it is, we doubt
not that the experience of many of our Canadian coevals corresponds with
our own. Whenever we read of the good Vicar of Wakefield, or of any
similar personage; when in the biography of some distinguished man, a
kind-hearted old clerical tutor comes upon the scene, or one moulded to
be a college-fellow, or one that had actually been a college-fellow,
carrying about with him, when down in the country the tastes and ideas
of the academic cloister--it is the figure of Dr. Phillips that rises
before the mental vision. And without doubt he was no bad embodiment of
the class of English character just alluded to.--He was thoroughly
English in his predilections and tone; and he unconsciously left on our
plastic selves traces of his own temperament and style.
It was from Dr. Phillips we received our first impressions of Cambridge
life; of its outer form, at all events; of its traditions and customs;
of the Acts and Opponencies in its Schools, and other quaint
formalities, still in use in our own undergraduate day, but now
abolished: from him we first heard of Trumpington, and St. Mary's, and
the Gogmagogs; of Lady Margaret and the cloisters at Queen's; of the
wooden bridge and Erasmus' walk in the gardens of that college; and of
many another storied object and spot, afterwards very familiar.
A manuscript Journal of a Johnsonian cast kept by Dr. Phillips, when a
youth, during a tour of his on foot in Wales, lent to us for perusal,
marks an era in our early experience, awakening in us, as it did, our
first inklings of travel. The excursion described was a trifling one in
itself--only from Whitchurch, in Herefordshire, across the Severn into
Wales--but to the unsophisticated fancy of a boy it was invested with a
peculiar charm; and it led, we think, in our own case, to many an
ambitious ramble, in after years, among cities and men.--In the time of
Dr. Phillips there was put up, by subscription, across the whole of the
western end of the school-house, over the door, a rough lean-to, of
considerable dimensions. A large covered space was thus provided for
purposes of recreation in bad weather. This room is memorable as being
associated with our first acquaintance with the term "Gymnasium:" that
was the title which we were directed to give it.--There is extant, we
believe, a good portrait in oil of Dr. Phillips.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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