John Ross took me down to
Portland, to have an interview with the Hon.
A. T. Galt, the Finance
Minister of Canada. I at once recognized in Mr. Galt a reduced likeness
of his father. Mr. Galt was about five feet eleven: his father, who I
had seen when a boy, about six feet four, and "buirdly" and stout in
proportion. The father wore spectacles - the son did not. The father was
the author of the "Annals of the Parish," "Laurie Todd," and many works
greatly read when I was young. He was, also, the founder of the town of
"Guelph," and of other towns in Upper Canada. If anyone wants to see an
admirable likeness of him, he had better consult "Fraser's Magazine,"
of one of the issues of 1830 to 1833, and he will there find a rough
engraving of the hoisting of the Union Jack at Guelph. Mr. Galt,
pere, was so very large a man that Mr. Archibald Prentice, of
the "Manchester Times," used to tell a story about his pointing Mr.
Galt out to a little humpbacked Scotchman in the High Street of
Edinburgh: "Eh! Jamie, mon, there's the great Galt, author of the
'Annals of the Parish.'" "'Annals o' the Payrish,' Archie, hech, sirs,
he's big eneuch to be the Payrish itself - let alone the annals o' it."
Mr. Galt, the Finance Minister, has done great services to Canada, and
is doing them still, in developing the mineral resources of the West,
and in other ways.
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