lding of a stone church in
Montreal was commenced, but the structure which promised to be "one of
the handsomest specimens of modern architecture in the province," was
not finished, for want of funds, ten years afterwards. In Upper Canada,
so late as 1795, no church had been built. Even in Newark, it is
quaintly added by the Duke de la Rochefoucault Liancourt, in the same
halls where the Legislative and Executive Councils held their sittings,
jugglers would have been permitted to display their tricks, if any
should have ever strayed to a country so remote. His Grace, quite
correct with regard to Newark, was at fault in speaking of the whole
province. At Stamford there was a Presbyterian Church, built in 1791,
and another church built for the use of all persuasions, a kind of free
and common soccage church, in 1795, which was destroyed in the
subsequent war. It was in this year that one of the most remarkable
men, and one of the most able and indefatigable of the colonial clergy,
was strolling about Marischal College, in Aberdeen, studying
philosophy. He was a very plain-looking Scotch lad and very cannie.
Altogether wanting in that oratorical brilliancy so necessary for an
efficient preacher of the great truths of Christianity, Mr. John
Strachan had diligently acquired a dry knowledge of the humanities, to
fit himself for a teacher of youth. He was, in a limited sense, a
classical scholar. Greek and Latin, Hebrew and the Mathematics, were at
his fingers' ends. Not long after leaving college, he obtained the
place of a preceptor to the children of a farmer in Angus-shire. The
situation of schoolmaster of Dunino, a parish situated foury miles
south of St. Andrews, in Fifeshire, and six miles north of Anstruther,
the school taught by Tennant, the orientalist, professor of Hebrew and
other oriental languages in St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, and the
author of the Poem of Anster Fair, became vacant, when Mr. John
Strachan made application for the fat berth, the salary being nearly
L30 a year, and obtained it. Mr. Strachan taught quietly at Dunino,
attending St. Andrews College, in the winter, until he received the
offer of L50 a year, as tutor to the family of a gentleman living in
Upper Canada. He accepted it, left Dunino, and went to the wilderness.
Mr. Strachan taught as a private tutor for some time and subsequently
established a school for himself, when he married a widow possessed of
cash and respectably connected. Th