* * * * *


STATISTICAL SKETCHES OF UPPER CANADA.


This eighteenpenny pamphlet--"for the use of emigrants, by a Backwoodsman,"
is one of the pleasantest and most sensible little books of the day. It is
worth all the "great big books" upon the same subject, and, strange to say,
has scarcely a spice of the leaven of party wickedness in its pages. The
information is in a facete but earnest vein, and we cheerfully miss in its
tone the dull preachment, the cold calculation, and matter-of-fact
obstinacy of a work professing to be statistical. After a just censure
upon the swarm of books on emigration, and their insufficiencies, (from
which we are glad to perceive Mr. Gourlay's "really valuable and
statistical account" is exempt,) the writer observes:

"My endeavour in these pages shall be to give such information to
emigrants, that they may not be disappointed on their arrival in
Canada;--that they may know how to proceed and where to go, and not as too
often happens, waste their time and their money in the great towns, making
fruitless inquiries of people just as ignorant of the nature and
capabilities of the country as themselves with this difference, that they
are aware of their ignorance, whereas their advisers think they know
something about the matter, and thereby often unintentionally mislead and
deceive them. In looking over this my introduction, I find I have been
most abominably egotistical;--so much so indeed, that my printer, were I
to continue through the work in this strain, might have the same excuse
that poor John Ballantine had for his delay in printing a learned work by
the Earl of B----, viz. that he had not a sufficient number of capital I-s