9,587; and the
grand total of money available for these glorious purposes, is
170,000l. I feel conscious that I have by no means done full justice
to this important subject; but the limits of a work like this render it
impossible so to do. Let it suffice to say, that Upper Canada is
inferior to none of its neighbouring rivals, as regards the quality of
instruction given; and that it is rapidly treading on the heels of the
most liberal of them, as regards the amount raised for its support. The
normal school, I conceive to be a model as nearly perfect as human
agency has yet achieved; and the chemical and agricultural lectures
there given, and practically illustrated on the small farm adjoining the
building, cannot fail to produce most useful and important results in a
young uncultivated country possessing the richest soil imaginable. The
Governor-General and the Government deserve every credit for the support
and encouragement they have given to education; but, if I may draw a
comparison without being invidious, I would repeat, that it is to the
unusual zeal and energy of Dr. Ryerson, to his great powers of
discriminating and selecting what he found most valuable in the
countless methods he examined, and to his combination and adaptation of
them, that the colony is mainly indebted for its present admirable
system. Well may Upper Canada be proud of her educational achievements,
and in her past exertions read a hopeful earnest of a yet more noble
future.[AT]

But it is not in education alone that Canada has been shadowing forth a
noble career. Emancipated from maternal apron-strings by a
constitutional self-government, and aided by the superior administrative
powers of the Earl of Elgin, she has exhibited an innate vitality which
had so long been smothered by Imperial misrule as to cause a doubt of
its existence; and if she has not shown it by the birth of populous
cities, she has proved it by a more general and diffusive prosperity. A
revenue quadrupled in four years needs no Chicagos or Buffalos to
endorse the colony's claims to energy and progress. Internal
improvements have also been undertaken on a large scale: railways are
threading their iron bands through waste and forest, and connecting in
one link all the North American colonies; the tubular bridge at Montreal
will be the most stupendous work yet undertaken by engineering skill;
canals are making a safe way for commerce, where a year or two back the
roaring rapi