tness about it, but it was a very rare occurrence indeed for
him to indulge in anything approaching to hearty laughter. His
self-control was marvellous. He was never surprised or startled, never
dismayed by unexpected intelligence, never taken off his guard. Yet he
possessed great dramatic talent, and in his addresses to juries and
public audiences could successfully simulate the most contradictory
feelings and emotions. One who judged him simply from such exhibitions
as these might well have set him down for an emotional and impetuous
man, apt to be led away by the fleeting passions and weaknesses of the
moment. Yet no one coming to such a conclusion would have had any
conception of his real character and idiosyncrasies. He certainly never
acted without motive, but his motives were sometimes dark and
unfathomable to everyone but himself. Not one among his contemporaries
was able to take his moral and intellectual measure with anything
approaching to completeness; and throughout the entire length and
breadth of Canadian biography there is no man of equal eminence
respecting whose real individuality so little is known.

Mr. Rolph's peculiarities were probably inherent, for the facts of his
early life, so far as known, afford no clue to the reading of the
riddle. He was the second son in a family consisting of eighteen
children, and was born at Grovesend, in the market town of Thornbury,
Gloucestershire, England, on the 4th of March, 1793. His father, Thomas
Rolph, was a physician of some local repute, who seems to have been
impelled to emigrate in consequence of the impossibility of making any
suitable provision in England for so numerous a progeny. The ascertained
facts with reference to John Rolph's early life in England are
singularly meagre. He accompanied his parents to Canada some time prior
to the War of 1812, for he served as a volunteer during the early part
of that conflict, and was for some months a paymaster of militia. During
the progress of the war he was taken prisoner by the enemy, and was
detained in custody for a short time at Batavia, in the State of New
York. An exchange of prisoners having been effected, he was set at
liberty. After his liberation he returned to England, where he entered
one of the colleges of the University of Cambridge; and, though he seems
to have left there without taking a degree, he was recognized as a young
man of very remarkable and precocious intellectual powers, likely to
b