yeomen, and the lower orders crowded into the outdoor congregations. The field-meetings—sometimes by barns, and occasionally on the lawn beside a mansion—were among his favourite preaching places.

So he laboured on for forty years, and even in extreme old age we find in his journal such entries as the following: "From Sunday morning, August the 27th, to Thursday morning, September the 21st, I was enabled by my Lord to preach fifty-four times in and out of doors-not far from my seventy-seventh year."

In his last illness his sufferings became intense, and he would cry: "My Father, my Father, support thy suffering child. Thy will be done, my Father, God."

Being asked by his nephew, “ What do you think of the Gospel which you have preached all your life?" he replied, "Oh, it is light and life and peace."

About three hours before his death he asked his nephew to read the 14th chapter of St. John's Gospel. He spoke upon discipleship, upon being one with Christ, and upon the teaching of that chapter as to the Holy Spirit, dwelling on which, he said: "I have no fear of death. The Spirit of God sustains me. God's Spirit is my support." Apparently this was the last word that he ever uttered. Soon after he entered into the everlasting light. A few days later the old Methodist chapel in Whitefriars Street beheld an unusual solemnity, and presently men with full breasts stood round the grave in Mount Jerome, and there returned to Mother Earth all that was now earthly of one of the best sons of Erin that the green sod ever covered.

XIV.

EGERTON RYERSON.

DURING the Revolutionary war a considerable number of the American colonists remained faithful to the Mother-Country. Their condition, after the war, was one of extreme hardship. They were exposed to suspicion and insult, and sometimes to outrage and spoliation. They were denounced by the Local Assemblies as traitors. Many of them were men of wealth, education, talent and professional ability; but they found their property confiscated, their families ostracized, and often their lives menaced. The fate of these patriotic men excited the sympathy of the Mother-Country. Their zeal for the unity of the Empire won for them the name of the United Empire Loyalists, or, more briefly, U. E. Loyalists.

The British Government made liberal provision for their settlement in the seaboard provinces and Canada. The close of the war was followed by an exodus of these faithful men and their families, who, from their loyalty to their King and the institutions of their fatherland, abandoned their homes and property, often large estates, to encounter the discomforts of new settlements, or the perils of the pathless wilderness. The British Parliament voted £3,300,000 for

the indemnification and assistance of the patriotic Loyalists, of whom twenty-five thousand are estimated to have sought refuge in the British colonies. If it be true, as has been averred of the early Puritan colonies of New England, that the wheat of the earth was sifted for the seed of that planting, then it is also true that that wheat was twice sifted for the planting of the Canadian commonweal. No country ever had more high-minded, patriotic and Christian fathers and founders than those who, at the call of duty, forsook their homes and pleasant fields and went into exile for conscience' sake.

The U. E. Loyalists came chiefly from New England and the State of New York. But a considerable number came from the Middle and Southern States of the Union. Several thousand settled near Halifax and on the Bay of Fundy. They were conveyed in transport ships and billeted in churches and private houses till provision could be made for their settlement on grants of land. Many of them arrived in wretched plight, and had to be clothed and fed by public or private charity. A large number established themselves on the St. John River, and founded the present city of St John.

What is now the Province of Ontario, at the close of the Revolutionary war was almost a wilderness. The entire European population is said to have been less than two thousand souls. These dwelt chiefly in the vicinity of the fortified posts on the St. Lawrence, the Niagara and the St. Clair rivers. It was proposed by the Home Government to create, as a refuge

for the Loyalist refugees, a new colony to the west of the older settlements on the St. Lawrence, it being deemed best to keep the French and English populations separate.

To each United Empire Loyalist was assigned a free grant of two hundred acres of land, as also to each child, even to those born after immigration, on their coming of age. The Government, moreover,

assisted with food, clothing and implements those loyal exiles who had lost all on their expatriation. Each settler received an axe, hoe and spade; a plough and one cow were allotted to every two families, and a whip-saw and cross-cut saw to each group of four households. Sets of tools, portable corn-mills, with steel plates like coffee-mills, and other conveniences and necessaries of life were also distributed among those pioneers of civilization in Upper Canada.

Many disbanded soldiers and militia and half-pay officers of English and German regiments took up land; and liberal land grants were made to immigrants from Great Britain. For three years the Government granted rations of food to the loyal refugees and soldiers. During the year 1784, it is estimated that ten thousand persons were located in Upper Canada. In course of time not a few immigrants from the United States took up land. The wilderness soon began to give place to smiling farms, thriving settlements and waving fields of grain; and zealous missionaries threaded the forest in order to minister to the scattered settlers the rites of religion. The country steadily prospered, undisturbed in its isolation by the great European war against Napoleon Bonaparte.

For its social organization the chief needs were a paper currency and banking facilities. The lack of money led to a system of barter, which proved an unsatisfactory method of exchange. Popular education was at a low ebb, although a Grammar School had been established in each of the eight districts into which