the order of the day.
"Nothing," says a distinguished writer upon that most frivolous of all
threadbare subjects, etiquette, "nothing is more decidedly the sign of a
vulgar-born or a vulgar-bred person than to be ready to practise the
art of cutting." I therefore bow to the well-dressed grisettes, upon the
principle of avoiding to be thought vulgar in mixed society by cutting a
lady of tremendous rank; as I would rather take a cook for a Countess,
or a chambermaid for an Honourable, than be guilty of so much rudeness.

You must not smile, gentle reader, and say cooks are often handsomer
than Countesses, or chambermaids prettier than Honourables; I am like
the old man of the Bubbles of Brunnen, insensible to anything but the
beauties of nature. Neither must you think we have no Countesses nor
Honourables in Canada. The former are in truth _rarae aves_, but the
latter--why, every change of ministry creates a batch of them.

CHAPTER II.

The Emigrant and his Prospects.

Those who really wish Canada well desire it to become a second Britain,
and not a mere second Texas. Those who wish it evil, and these comprise
the restless, unprovided race of politicians under whose incessant
agitation Canada has so long groaned, desire its Texian annexation to
the already overgrown States in its vicinity.

That it may become a second Britain and hold the balance of power on the
continent of America is my prayer, and the prayer too of one who
entertains no enmity towards the people of the United States, but who
admires their unceasing exertions in behalf of their country, who would
admire their institutions, based as they are upon those of England, if
the grand design of Washington had been carried out, and perfect freedom
of thought and of action had been secured to the people, instead of a
slavish awe of the mob, an absolute dread of the uneducated masses, a
sovereign contempt of the opinion of the world in accomplishing any
design for the aggrandizement of the Union, the most despotic and
degrading oppression of all who presume to hold religious opinions at
variance with those of the masses, and the chained bondsman in a land of
liberty!

To guard the respectable settler, who has a character at stake, and a
family with some little capital to lay out to better advantage than he
can at home, against the grievous and often fatal errors which have been
propagated for sinister motives by needy adventurers who have written