The men had dug a narrow track to the doors, which are formed of boards placed lengthways and easily removed. These were pulled away and a wealth of withered flowers and grasses lay within in heaps upon the floors. The pent-up scent of all these summer flowers rushed out upon the winter air, and burdened it with aromatic fragrance.

"At last we reached our châlet-the highest one of all. Johannes and his cousin were taking out the hay in little bundles and building them up into layers of straw and rope, to bind them into those firm packs on which we were to travel down into the valley

in the afternoon. The houses and the big hotels looked very small and mean down there, and the train, which crawled along, seemed but a trivial thing, all huddled, too, as these objects were, in wreaths of smoke, whilst we-oh! we were up two thousand feet above it all, in the heart of a mountain winter-world, with a dream of summer at our backs.

"We were advised to combine a firm with a light hold upon the cord which surrounded the hay. I inclined, I believe, to the former hint, for, whatever happened to my steed during that memorable ride, I always found myself firmly attached to its back, whether for better or worse I know not. We started with a slow, writhing movement which was wholly pleasant. We slid and glided over the first snow-field with enormous ease. Looking

behind me I saw my companions sitting, as it were, on the backs of nice green snakes which wriggled noiselessly through sunlight and through shade. But then we came to the end of gentle meadow lands, and slowed off on the brink of a sheer descent of some three hundred feet, at the end of which the track disappeared in the pine forest. And here we rested awhile.

The descent recommenced. A yell from the front warned us to duck under, as we shot through the first skirts of forest, the branches breaking against our heads, and out again down another shoot, steeper than the first, but smooth, and ending in a flat meadow. There was another pause, and then we plunged sheer into the pinewood. The track was very narrow and evidently carried over the roughest ground, for it rose and fell in mighty curves like waves of the sea. On either hand the solid trunks of fir-trees stood to bruise the dangling and unwary toe. In the middle of the wood another halt was called, and some of the hay left behind to be called for at some future period. We were now requested to sit tight and look about us, and it was grimly borne in upon our minds that a nasty thing lay in front, as Johannes muttered that we were likely to find the way "komisch." But we had passed through so much in such safety that I could not now feel alarmed, and sat up very superior on my soft saddle. Moreover, ignorance is bliss, and we could see nothing ahead -the road seemed suddenly to disappear. The cause of this disappearance was only too manifest the next minute, for, after a lull, a lurch, much more tremendous than any before experienced, warned us of a real danger. We were shot forward down a narrow gully between high trees, and precipitated at an angle which seemed absolutely perpendicular. To increase the terror

of that minute the hay-snake seemed to have assumed a diabolical personality. It hit Johannes about the head, jumped over him, still bearing us powerless upon its back, and then it ramped forward into an abyss, darkened by the depth of forest. We obeyed orders, my cousin and I—we sat tight, with our hearts anywhere but in the right position. Then we were thrown to the ground.

"The next thing I was aware of was a dead halt, with the hay on the top of me, and my fingers still tightly holding the rope, my cousin in the same position, and the figure of our driver emerging from a drift far above in the wood. No one was hurt, and the trees surveyed the havoc with profound serenity. The descent had been in all ways up to our expectations. Its dangers added to its excitement, and its excitement to its charm. We shook ourselves together, and plunged for some minutes along a deep track of level woodland, then out of the trees at last, and down more meadows into the open valley."

THE REVEREND DOCTOR RYERSON.*

BY JOHN GEORGE HODGINS, M.A., LL.D.

THE memories of great and noble men are a rich heritage to those who remain after they are gone. But it is no less true, that the waters of Lethe, alas, too soon pass over the memories, as well as the deeds, of even our greatest men. Who now speaks of our first Governor Simcoe; or, with intelligent appreciation, of Lord Elgin, our accomplished constitutional Governor-General; or of Sir John Beverley Robinson, or Robert Baldwin, as jurists and statesmen; for, to none of them has a single patriotic stone been raised, or a public memorial erected, to perpetuate their names and memory in "this Canada of ours." Yet truer sons to all her higher interests, and in their respective spheres, this Dominion has never known.

We have sought of later years to rescue from oblivion the names and deeds and memories of some of our most noted men, by erecting statues of them in the open air, and in the broad daylight, so that all may see the forms of those who have "deserved well of their country." Conspicuous among these is the statue of the subject of this sketch.

Having now been fifty years in the public service, and all of that time in connection with one of the most important departments of the Government, I have necessarily come in contact with many of our foremost public men, and noted strangers. Such a prolonged experience naturally enables one to estimate men and things by a standard of comparison, more or less high, as the years go by. That experience, and the moderating influence on opinion of time and distance, enables me to look the more dispassionately at the man we honour to-night, and at every side of his character. For his was indeed many-sided. No man, to my mind, better illustrated what may be termed the "evolution of character"-of early training and discipline-than did Dr. Ryerson.

As a youth, he was subject to many impulses, guided and controlled, as they were, by a Mother's loving hand. To her, he states, that he was "principally indebted for any studious habits,

* We have pleasure in reproducing the admirable paper read by Dr. J. George Hodgins, at the ceremony of unveiling the portraits of the Revs. Dr. Ryerson and Dr. Nelles at Victoria University. These portraits, by Mr. J. W. L. Forster, are two of the best portraits we have ever seen. Mr. Forster had splendid subjects to begin with and has caught the very spirit of the noble men whose portraits he has painted. —ED.

mental energy, or even capacity, or decision of character." From her, too, came religious instruction, "poured into his mind in childhood (as he said) by a mother's counsels, and infused into his heart by a mother's prayers and tears." When first under the influence of an awakened conscience, he became an ascetic, almost as pronounced in his methods of mental self-mortification as the veriest Trappist, with whose severe discipline Wesley himself was somewhat enamoured. When duty, however, called the youthful Egerton back to his father's farm, he obeyed "for the honour of religion," as he said; and in that spirit, he tells us, he "ploughed every acre of ground for the season, cradled every stalk of wheat, rye and oats, and mowed every spear of grass, pitched the whole, first on a waggon, and then from the waggon onto the hay-mow, or stack." While the neighbours were astonished at one man doing so much work, he said: "I neither felt fatigue nor depression, for the joy of the Lord was my strength.'" Then, as usher, or master, in his gifted Brother's school, and as missionary and farm-instructor to the Indians at the Credit, in 1826, you see the same zeal, the same self-sacrifice and devotion to duty,―never flinching and never holding back.

Again, as the higher calls of the ministry required him to apply himself to acquire the necessary knowledge, he entered into that practical school of itinerancy, so noted in the history of the early Methodist preachers, and so celebrated in producing noble and heroic men in the early days of Methodism in this country.

And here I would pay a willing tribute, from my own experience, to the self-denying labours of these devoted men-the early Methodist preachers. It is now over sixty years (1833) since I left my father's house, in Dublin, to settle in the backwoods— first near London, and afterwards in Trafalgar. The years which I spent there are fragrant with many memories, and with pleasant associations of primitive farm life. And no less so, for the tender recollections of the simple services in school-houses in humble homes, or around the fires of the undisturbed campmeeting in the woods. My own strong conviction is that the debt which Canada owes to the early Methodist preachers, to the single-hearted exhorters and class-leaders, as well as the devoted Presbyterians and Baptists, who come later into the field, can never be repaid. To them is this country indebted for keeping alive, in those early days, the deep religious feeling and devotion which they themselves had created and developed.

In Dr. Ryerson's case, the contact with the writings of Wesley, of Blair, of Fletcher, and also of Blackstone, Locke and Paley, in that silent, thoughtful study, for which the long round of the