it is of incalculable importance that I should branches-which, unlike the contests of receive this support from America." These party, unite instead of dividing the members are ominous words. of the body politic." The circumstances of his position forced upon Lord Elgin's mind the question what, under the system of Responsible Government, would be the functions of a Colonial Gover nor. Would he not become a roi faineant, a mere figure-head? By no means, replies Lord Elgin. "I believe on the contrary, that there is more room for the exercise of influence on the part of the Governor under my system than under any that ever was before devised; an influence, however, wholly moral-an influence of suasion, sympathy, and moderation, which softens the temper while it elevates the views of local politics." "As the Imperial Government and Parliament gradually withdraw from legislative interference, and from the exercise of patronage in Colonial affairs, the office of Governor tends to become, in the most emphatic sense of the term, the link which connects the mother country and the Colony, and his influence the means by which harmony of action between the local and Imperial authorities is to be preserved. It is not, however, in my humble judgment, by evincing an anxious desire to stretch to the utmost constitutional principles in his favour, but on the contrary, by the formal acceptance of the conditions of the Parliamentary system, that this influence can be most surely extended and confirmed. Placed by his position above the strife of parties-holding office by a tenure less precarious than the Ministers who surround him-having no political interest to serve but that of the community whose affairs he is appointed to administer -his opinion cannot fail, when all cause for suspicion and jealousy is removed, to have great weight in the Colonial councils, while he is set at liberty to constitute himself in an especial manner the patron of those larger and higher interests-such interests, for example, as those of education, and of moral and material progress in all its Such seems Excellently expressed, as usual. But is the time never to come when the native rulers of the country shall themselves "have no political interest to serve but that of the community whose affairs they are appointed to administer?" Are they never to be competent, and sufficiently patriotic themselves, to care for the "larger and higher interests, such as those of education, and of moral and material progress in all its branches ?" Are those interests to be always consigned to the guardianship of a serene arbitrator from the other side of the Atlantic, while Canadian statesmen continue to be ignominiously devoted to "petty local and personal interests," and to wallow in what Lord Elgin elsewhere calls "the dirt and confusion of local factions." Are the elect of the Canadian people never to be gentlemen capable of conducting their own political contests temperately and decently without the perpetual tutorship of a British grandee? to have been the opinion of Lord Elgin. He assumed that the functions of a GovernorGeneral, as described by himself in the words just quoted, were not only useful but eternal. He took at once to task all who spoke of the state of dependency as one of provisional pupilage, out of which the Colony must pass before it could attain maturity. "You must renounce the habit of telling the Colonies that the Colonial is a provisional existence. You must allow them to believe that, without severing the bonds which unite them to Great Britain, they may attain the degree of perfection, and of social and political development, to which organized communities of free men have a right to aspire." But perfect development surely, in the case of a nation as well as in that of a man, carries with it the power of self-guidance, whereas the general language of Lord Elgin, and perhaps still more palpably that of his able biographer, distinctly implies that Can ada is, and will always remain, in character a child, needing the constant intervention of British wisdom, in the person of a GovernorGeneral, to keep her in the right course. And yet, all the time, both Lord Elgin and his biographer are perpetually complaining that British wisdom on the subject of the Colonies is ignorance and folly-such ignorance and such folly that Lord Elgin is driven to seek for the support of a more intelligent opinion in the United States. In Lord Elgin's time there was what there happily is not now, a strong movement in favour of annexation, and this evidently coloured all his perceptions. "If you take your stand on the hypothesis that the Colonial existence is one with which the colonists ought to rest satisfied, then, I think, you are entitled to denounce, without reserve or measure, those who propose, for some secondary object, to substitute the Stars and Stripes for the Union Jack. But if, on the contrary, you assume that it is a provisional state, which admits of but a stunted and partial growth, and out of which all communities ought in the course of nature to strive to pass, how can you refuse to permit your Colonies here, when they have arrived at the proper stage in their existence, to place themselves in a condition which is at once most favourable to their security and to their perfect national development? What reasons can you assign for the refusal, except such as are founded on selfishness, and are therefore morally worthless? If you say that your great lubberly boy is too big for the nursery, and that you have no other room for him in your house, how can you decline to allow him to lodge with his elder brother over the way, when the attempt to keep up an estab-| lishment for himself would seriously embarrass him?" It is needless to observe that, at the the present day Canadians, with scarcely an exception, would deny that annexation to the United States was the condition most favourable to our security; and still more, that it was the condition most favourable to our national development. Lord Elgin, though not a party man, seems to have been a Peelite in his exclusive addiction to the "three courses." In the case of Canada, which he was considering, there were four-the nursery; another room in the house; a lodging with our elder brethren, (as Lord Elgin is pleased to call our distant and rather uncongenial cousins on the other side of the line); and a house of our own. The last course may not be desirable or feasible, but in an exhaustive discussion of the case it was at least as well worth considering as annexation. However little we may be prepared to change our present condition, professions of hopeless and interminable feebleness are not likely to strengthen our position in any quarter, whether British or foreign. The bonds formed by commercial protection, and the disposal of local offices being severed, Lord Elgin thought it very desirable that the prerogative of the Crown, as the fountain of honour, should be used to bind the Empire to the throne. But he held that two principles should be observed in the distribution of Imperial honours among colonists. First, they should appear to emanate directly from the Crown, not from the local executives; and, secondly, be conferred as much as possible on men no longer actively engaged in political life. It may be doubted whether the first principle could be observed in the case of a Colony any more than in that of the mother country, consistently with constitutional government. As to the second, it has not been regarded at all. What Lord Elgin calls "the Canadian Tory Rebellion of 1849" being at an end, the halcyon days of his administration began. He made a progress, attended only by one aide-de-camp and a servant, through the most strongly British districts, and was cordially received by all except a few Orangemen and a few old members of the Family Compact. His biographer, however, complains that his enemies of the latter class were able, by their social position, and their influence or opin He left our shores in a blaze of the oratorical pyrotechnics in which he was a consummate artist. His pictures of Canadian scenery in these parting addresses are eminently graceful. In his farewell to Montreal he says: "I shall remember those early months of my residence here, when I learnt in this beautiful neighbourhood to appreciate the charms of a bright Canadian winter day, and to take delight in the cheerful music of your sleigh bells. I still remember one glorious afternoon-an afternoon in April-when looking down from the hill at Monklands, on my return from transacting business in your city, I beheld that the vast plain stretching out before me, which I had always seen clothed in the white garb of winter, had assumed on a sudden, and as if by enchantment, the livery of spring; while your noble St. Lawrence, bursting through his icy fetters, had begun to sparkle in the sunshine, and to murmur his vernal hymn of thanksgiving to the bounteous Giver of light and heat." In his farewell to Quebec he ion at home, to do some injury to his reputa- the old people in the coves, who put their tion. heads out of the windows as I passed along, and cried 'Welcome home again!' still ringing in my ears, I mounted the hill and drove through the avenue to the house-door. I saw the dropping trees on the lawn, with every one of which I was so familiar, clothed in the tenderest green of spring, and the river beyond, calm and transparent as a mirror, and the ships fixed and motionless as statues on its surface, and the whole landscape bathed in a flood of that bright Canadian sun, which so seldom pierces our murky atmosphere on the other side of the Atlantic. I began to think that persons were to be envied who were not forced by the necessities of their position to quit these engrossing interests and lovely scenes for the purpose of proceeding to distant lands, but who were able to remain among them until they pass to that quiet corner of the Garden of Mount Hermon which juts into the river, and commands a view of the city, the shipping, Point Levi, the Island of Orleans, and the range of Laurentines; so that through the dim watches of the tranquil night which precedes the dawning of the eternal day, the majestic citadel of Quebec, with its noble train of satellite hills, may seem to rest forever on the sight, and the low murmur of the waters of the St. Lawrence, with the hum of busy life on their surface, fall ceaselessly on the ear." says "For the last time I welcome you as my guests to this charming residence, which I have been in the habit of calling my home. I did not, I will frankly confess it, know what it would cost me to break this habit until the period of my departure approached; and I began to feel that the great interests which have long engrossed my attention and thoughts were passing out of my hands. I had a hint of what my feelings really were upon this point-a pretty broad hint, tooone lovely morning in June last, when I returned to Quebec after my temporary absence in England, and landed in the cove below Spencerwood (because it was Sunday, and I did not want to make a disturbance in the town) and when with the greetings of In his Quebec speech Lord Elgin refers to his successor, Sir Edmund Head, as "a gentleman of the highest character, the greatest ability, and the most varied accomplishments. and attainments." Sir Edmund was Lord Elgin's equal in academical distinction at Oxford, his senior in standing, and had examined him for a fellowship at Merton. Two years of rest at home, and then Lord Elgin was sent to China. (To be concluded in our next.) ITALIAN VIGNETTES. QUIET HOURS IN ROME DURING THE VATICAN COUNCIL. UR room in the Albergo Minerva is | us for a long time, seized the opportunity of There is nothing in it like anything that I had not expected much of modern Rome and yet I was disappointed. It is less grand and gloomy than I had imagined. I was surprised to find the houses low and dingy. The narrowness and unattractiveness of the streets did not surprise me. Even the re We were not out of our beds when "Mariannina" came floating up to our window from the court with guitar accompaniment. We had heard it first from the merry wild voices of the Ischiani, and it seemed a greet-nowned Corso would be a second-rate street ing. When will the delusion vanish that some new and strange sensation ought to be felt on waking in Rome for the first time? Whatever one may know about the belittling influence of the modern city, it is the idea of the Rome of antiquity that at a distance is always uppermost in the mind, and to which everything is bound to conform itself. The man who cried Ro-ma-, as we approached the Seven-hilled City, seemed absurd, because he had not a sonorous voice Nevertheless all looked very grey, chilly and uninspiring. We were leaving the breakfast-room when a waiter, who had been looking wistfully at in Naples. The people in the streets are a motley and not a striking crowd. I cannot fix upon any distinguishing feature. I look in vain for the handsome, proud, wicked Roman, as well as for the fine physical development which is seen further south. Everybody is commonplace. I was not in a mood for seeing ruins. We drove on, giving little direction, through the streets without sidewalks, which have been so often described, and through the meanlooking Piazza di Spragua, unredeemed from the commonplace except by its single fountain, round which the water-bearers were gathered with their jars, and its uplook to the Pincian over that magnificent flight of |