in securing professors and seeing the provincial university
launched.[37] {37} At the same time, the two other Canadian colleges of
note, M'Gill University and Queen's College, came into active
existence. In October, 1839, after many years of delay, Montreal saw
the corner-stone of the first English and Protestant College in Lower
Canada laid,[38] and in the winter of 1841-2, Dr. Liddell sailed from
Scotland to begin the history of struggle and gallant effort which has
characterized Queen's College, Kingston, from first to last. It is
perhaps the most interesting detail of early university education in
Canada, that the Presbyterian College started in a frame house, with
two professors, one representing Arts and one Theology, and with some
twenty students, very few of whom, however, were "fitted to be
matriculated."[39]

It is well to remember, in face of beginnings so irregular, and even
squalid, that deficiencies in Canadian college education had been made
good by the English and Scottish universities, and that Canadian higher
education was from the outset assisted by the genuine culture and
learning of the British colleges; for the main sources of university
inspiration in British North America {38} were Oxford and Cambridge,
Glasgow and Edinburgh.[40]

There were, of course, other less formal modes of education. When once
political agitation commenced, the press contributed not a little to
the education of the nation, and must indeed be counted one of the
chief agencies of information, if not of culture. Everywhere, from
Quebec to Hamilton, enterprising politicians made their influence felt
through newspapers. The period prior to the Rebellion had seen
Mackenzie working through his _Colonial Advocate_; and the cause of
responsible government soon found saner and abler exponents in Francis
Hincks and George Brown. At every important centre, one, two, or even
more news-sheets, not without merit, were maintained; and the secular
press was reinforced by such educational enterprise as the Dougalls
attempted in the _Montreal Witness_, or by church papers like the
Methodist _Christian Guardian_.[41] {39} Nothing, perhaps, is more
characteristic of this phase of Canadian intellectual growth than the
earlier volumes of the _Witness_, which played a part in Canada similar
to that of the Chambers' publications in Scotland. The note struck was
deeply sober and moral; the appeal was made to the working and middle
classes