middle size. His natural capacity is excellent, but when
the mind is unimproved and no opportunity has been afforded for the
acquisition of new ideas, little can be expected from even the most
fertile understanding. All improvements have been the result of
observation, there being nothing original in any one, nor an iota new
under the sun. It is in the application of the natural elements only in
which one individual excels another, his capacity for excellence, of
course, favoring observation. As the bee sips honey from the flower, so
does man inhale the poetry of nature, daguerreotyping it upon his
understanding, either from the mountain's top, from the summit of the
ocean wave, or from the wreck of battle; so does the astronomer learn
from the firmament itself the relative proportions and distances, the
transits, eclipses, and periodical appearances of other worlds, than
that in which he lives, moves, and has his being; and so the man of
science collects and combines the very elements themselves, either to
purposes of destruction or towards the progress, improvement, and
almost perfection of human nature. The Canadian could only reason from
his own experience, and that was so exceedingly limited, that his
backwardness in enterprise is less to be wondered at than the eagerness
with which he copies the enterprise of others. The Canadian, like the
native of old France, is a thinking animal. He is ever doubting, ever
mistrustful. In spiritual matters, he is guided by his curate, who, if
he wishes to stand well with him, must meddle with nothing else. And
who will say that such a people are incapable of improvement?
Railroads, intercourse with others, and time, will yet make the
Canadian think for himself much sooner than they will influence others,
more naturally confiding, generous, and credulous than he is, but whose
very energy and bravery only cover a multitude of sins.

Lieutenant-General Sir Gordon Drummond met the parliament of Lower
Canada on the 26th of January, 1816. He informed the two Houses that
the Regent had committed to him the administration of the government of
Lower Canada, that he had entered on the duties of his trust with a
deep sense of their importance and with a more earnest desire to
discharge them for the general advantage of a province in the capital
of which he had been born; the King was no better in health, but had no
corporeal suffering and only continued in a state of undisturbed
tranquilli