The Albion was founded in 1822 by Dr. John Charlton Fisher, who afterwards became a distinguished Editor at Quebec. To him Dr. Bartlett succeeded. The New York Albion still flourishes under Mr. Cornwallis, retaining its high character for the superior excellence of its matter, retaining also many traits of its ancient outward aspect, in the style of its type, in the distribution of its matter. It has also retained its old motto. Its familiar vignette heading of oak branches round the English rose, the thistle of Scotland, and the shamrock, has been thinned out, and otherwise slightly modified; but it remains a fine artistic composition, well executed.
There was another journal from New York much esteemed at York for the real respectability of its character, the New York Spectator. It was read for the sake of its commercial and general information, rather than for its literary news. To the minds of the young the Greek revolution had a singular fascination. We remember once entertaining the audacious idea of constructing a history of the struggle in Greece, of which the authorities would, in great measure, have been copious cuttings from the New York Spectator columns. One advantage of the embryo design certainly was a familiarity acquired with the map of Hellas within and without the Peloponnesus. Navarino, Modon, Coron, Tripolitza, Mistra, Missolonghi, with the incidents that had made each temporarily famous, were rendered as familiar to the mind's eye as Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Thermopylæ, and the events connected with each respectively, of an era two thousand years previously, afterwards from other circumstances became. Colocotroni, Mavrocordato, Miaulis, Bozzaris, were heroes to the imagination as fully as Miltiades, Alcibiades, Pericles, and Nicias, afterwards became.
Partly in consequence of the eagerness with which the columns of the New York Spectator used to be ransacked with a view to the composition of the proposed historical work, we remember the peculiar interest with which we regarded the editor of that periodical at a later period, on falling in with him, casually, at the Falls of Niagara. Mr. Hall was then well advanced in years; and from a very brief interview, the impression received was, that he was the beau ideal of a veteran editor of the highest type; for a man, almost omniscient; unslumberingly observant; sympathetic, in some way, with every passing occurrence and every remark; tenacious of the past; grasping the present on all sides, with readiness, genial interest and completeness. In aspect, and even to some extent in costume, Mr. Hall might have been taken for an English bishop of the early part of the Victorian era.
XX.
QUEEN STREET, FROM GEORGE STREET TO YONGE STREET.—MEMORIES OF THE OLD COURT HOUSE.
hen we pass George Street we are in front of the park-lot originally selected by Mr. Secretary Jarvis. It is now divided from south to north by Jarvis street, a thoroughfare opened up through the property in the time of Mr. Samuel Peters Jarvis, the Secretary's son. Among the pleasant villas that now line this street on both sides, there is one which still is the home of a Jarvis, the Sheriff of the County.