Canada has not yet shaken off the fetters of her great grandparents
sufficiently to bring out in a clear, marked way her own
individuality. Her native sons and daughters inherit too faithfully
the English, Irish, Scotch or French tenor of the characters of their
predecessors to be able to grant to our ambitious country the national
peculiarities and idiosyncracies which she covets, in order to assert
herself freely, as the mother of a people who bear her resemblance
stamped upon their mental and moral features. When a country has
succeeded in fixing a seal upon the brow of every son that is born to
her, she has secured the right of being paralleled, at least in one
respect, with the greatest nations of the world. In time, Canada will
accomplish this, for Canadians should be wonderful people. It baffles
her to-day, because it is a question of time, and in her incapacity to
influence time, Canada is only equal to Caesar's Rome, or Victoria's
Great Britain.
There was a look of keen intelligence in Dr Campbell's countenance
that pleased me particularly, something so refreshing to see, after
all the vapid expressions of uneducated men. I could easily understand
now, how he gained that _prestige_ which made conquests for him
wherever he went. Truly, I did not believe him a very widely informed
man, but he was a man of fixed principles and a man of ambition.
Moreover he had a wonderful _savoir-faire_ that carried him through
all sorts of adventitious circumstances gracefully.
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