Hanging in his study we remember noticing a large engraved map of "Cabotia." It was a delineation of the British Possessions in North America—the present Dominion of Canada in fact. It had been his purpose in 1823 to publish a "Canadian Annual Register;" but this he never accomplished. While printing the Upper Canada Gazette, he edited in conjunction with that periodical and on the same sheet, the "Weekly Register," bearing the motto, "Our endeavour will be to stamp the very body of the time—its form and pressure: we shall extenuate nothing, nor shall we set down aught in malice." From this publication may be gathered much of the current history of the period. In it are given many curious scientific excerpts from his Common Place Book. At a later period, he published, at Toronto, a weekly paper in quarto shape, named the "Palladium."
Among the non-official advertisements in the Upper Canada Gazette, in the year 1823, we observe one signed "Charles Fothergill," offering a reward "even to the full value of the volumes," for the recovery of missing portions of several English standard works which had belonged formerly, the advertisement stated, to the "Toronto Library," broken up "by the Americans at the taking of York." It was suggested that probably the missing books were still scattered about, up and down, in the town. It is odd to see the name of "Toronto" cropping out in 1823, in connection with a library. (In a much earlier York paper we notice the "Toronto Coffee House" advertised.)
Mr. Fothergill belonged to the distinguished Quaker family of that name in Yorkshire. A rather good idea of his character of countenance may be derived from the portrait of Dr. Arnold, prefixed to Stanley's Memoir. An oil painting of him exists in the possession of some of his descendants.
We observe in Leigh Hunt's London Journal, i. 172, a reference to "Fothergill's Essay on the Philosophy, Study and Use of Natural History;" and we have been assured that it is our Canadian Fothergill who was its author. We give a pathetic extract from a specimen of the production, in the work just referred to: "Never shall I forget," says the essayist, "the remembrance of a little incident which many will deem trifling and unimportant, but which has been peculiarly interesting to my heart, as giving origin to sentiments and rules of action which have since been very dear to me."
"Besides a singular elegance of form and beauty of plumage," continues the enthusiastic naturalist, "the eye of the common lapwing is peculiarly soft and expressive; it is large, black, and full of lustre, rolling, as it seems to do, in liquid gems of dew. I had shot a bird of this beautiful species; but, on taking it up, I found it was not dead. I had wounded its breast; and some big drops of blood stained the pure whiteness of its feathers. As I held the hapless bird in my hand, hundreds of its companions hovered round my head, uttering continued shrieks of distress, and, by their plaintive cries, appeared to bemoan the fate of one to whom they were connected by ties of the most tender and interesting nature; whilst the poor wounded bird continually moaned, with a kind of inward wailing note, expressive of the keenest anguish; and, ever and anon, it raised its drooping head, and turning towards the wound in its breast, touched it with its bill, and then looked up in my face, with an expression that I have no wish to forget, for it had power to touch my heart whilst yet a boy, when a thousand dry precepts in the academical closet would have been of no avail."
The length of this extract will be pardoned for the sake of its deterrent drift in respect to the wanton maiming and massacre of our feathered fellow-creatures by the firearms of sportsmen and missiles of thoughtless children.
Eastward from the house where we have been pausing, the road took a slight sweep to the south and then came back to its former course towards the Don bridge, descending in the meantime into the valley of a creek or watercourse, and ascending again from it on the other side. Hereabout, to the left, standing on a picturesque knoll and surrounded by the natural woods of the region, was a good sized two-storey dwelling; this was the abode of Mr. David MacNab, sergeant-at-arms to the House of Assembly, as his father had been before him. With him resided several accomplished, kind-hearted sisters, all of handsome and even stately presence; one of them the belle of the day in society at York.
Here were the quarters of the Chief MacNab, whenever he came up to York from his Canadian home on the Ottawa. It was not alone when present at church that this remarkable gentleman attracted the public gaze; but also, when surrounded or followed by a group of his fair kinsfolk of York, he marched with dignified steps along through the whole length of King Street, and down or up the Kingston road to and from the MacNab homestead here in the woods near the Don.
In his visits to the capital, the Chief always wore a modified highland costume, which well set off his stalwart, upright form: the blue bonnet and feather, and richly embossed dirk, always rendered him conspicuous, as well as the tartan of brilliant hues depending from his shoulder after obliquely swathing his capacious chest; a bright scarlet vest with massive silver buttons, and dress coat always jauntily thrown back, added to the picturesqueness of the figure.
It was always evident at a glance that the Chief set a high value on himself.—"May the MacNab of MacNabs have the pleasure of taking wine with Lady Sarah Maitland?" suddenly heard above the buzz of conversation, pronounced in a very deep and measured tone, by his manly voice, made mute for a time, on one occasion, the dinner-table at Government House. So the gossip ran. Another story of the same class, but less likely, we should think, to be true, was, that seating himself, without uncovering, in the Court-room one day, a messenger was sent to him by the Chief Justice, Sir William Campbell, on the Bench, requiring the removal of his cap; when the answer returned, as he instantly rose and left the building, was, that "the MacNab of MacNabs doffs his bonnet to no man!"