or this august assembly by taking the floor of the
house, we might be more free to avow our feelings."

"I beg you will allow me to correct you, Miss Mary, as being rather
sentimental in the choice of your last word," said Mr. Howe, appealing
to Sir Howard with the question, "Your Excellency, have I not a right to
make the correction?"

"I acknowledge your suggestion, Mr. Speaker," said Mary Douglas in her
own defence, "and hope, before the session is over, to make a decided
improvement both in views and technicalities."

"What!" exclaimed Captain Douglas, coming towards Mr. Howe. "Are you and
Mary to take opposite measures already?"

"Not at all, sir," returned Mr. Howe, "I was merely setting her right
on--" "technicalities," said the young girl, with a merry ringing laugh.

"Ah, Mary!" cried Charles Douglas, playfully pulling back the clustering
ringlets from his sister's white forehead, "poetry and politics cannot
exist on very intimate terms of friendship, at least too much poetry."

"Have a care, young man," said Sir Howard, laughing at the last remark.

"Ah! there are exceptions to every rule, sir, which you did not give me
an opportunity to add, and I still make the former assertion to be, to a
certain extent, counterbalanced by the latter."

From the appearance of different speakers the house seems to be out of
order.

From playful remarks followed an interesting and varied stock of earnest
political conversation, in which Lady Douglas joined with apparent ease.
From agriculture the question led to education, one in which His
Excellency had spent much time and labor.

It is to Sir Howard that the present university owes its first
existence, its various stages of progress and final success. It was he
who procured the first charter granting the privileges of a university.
Few can realize the difficulties that Sir Howard met before
accomplishing this great boon, and fewer still could see the way for
raising the means necessary for the support of this institution. But an
endowment was raised by grants from the revenue arising from the sale of
unoccupied lands, and equal grants from the House of Assembly.

The next barrier presented by the colonists, for the suppression of the
Thirty-nine Articles and the admission of Dissenters, was in itself a
formidable array of difficulty, notwithstanding the next uprising of
Episcopalian remonstrance. A sea of troubles! But reason, the true
pilot, never deserted Sir