Spadina Avenue was laid out by Dr. Baldwin on a scale that would have satisfied the designers of St. Petersburg or Washington. Its width is one hundred and twenty feet. Its length from the water's edge to the base of Spadina Hill would be nearly three miles. Garnished on both sides by a double row of full grown chestnut trees, it would vie in magnificence, when seen from an eminence, with the Long Walk at Windsor.
Eastward of Spadina House, on the same elevation of land, was Davenport, the picturesque and chateau-like home of Col. Wells, formerly of the 43rd regiment, built at an early period. Col. Wells was a fine example of the English officer, whom we so often see retiring from the camp gracefully and happily into domestic life. A faithful portrait of him exists, in which he wears the gold medal of Badajoz. His sons, natural artists, and arbiters of taste, inherited, along with their æsthetic gifts, also lithe and handsome persons. One of them, now, like his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the army, was highly distinguished in the Crimea; and on revisiting Toronto after the peace with Russia, was publicly presented with a sword of honour. The view of the Lake and intervening forest, as seen from Davenport and Spadina, before the cultivation of the alluvial plain below, was always fine. (On his retirement from the army, the second Col. Wells took up his abode at Davenport.)
III.
FROM BROCK STREET TO THE OLD FRENCH FORT.
eturning again to the front. The portion of the Common that lies immediately west of the foot of Brock Street was enclosed for the first time and ornamentally planted by Mr. Jameson. Before his removal to Canada, Mr. Jameson had filled a judicial position in the West Indies. In Canada, he was successively Attorney-General and Vice-Chancellor, the Chancellorship itself being vested in the Crown. The conversational powers of Mr. Jameson were admirable: and no slight interest attached to the pleasant talk of one who, in his younger days, had been the familiar associate of Southey, Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In a volume of poems by Hartley Coleridge, son of the philosopher, published in 1833, the three sonnets addressed "To a Friend," were addressed to Mr. Jameson, as we are informed in a note. We give the first of these little poems at length:
"When we were idlers with the loitering rills, The need of human love we little noted: Our love was nature; and the peace that floated On the white mist, and dwelt upon the hills, To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills: One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted, That, wisely doating, asked not why it doated, And ours the unknown joy, which knowing kills. But now I find how dear thou wert to me; That man is more than half of nature's treasure, Of that fair Beauty which no eye can see, Of that sweet music which no ear can measure; And now the streams may sing for others' pleasure, The hills sleep on in their eternity."