Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

A FOUNDER OF CITIES. 463
when I shall have organised the routine of my business, and
perhaps then I may do something. "What would you think of a
series to be called ' The Settlers,' or ' Tales of Guelph ' ? The
idea has come often across my mind, and the materials are both
novel and abundant.
One cannot but think of the reported speech of
George Eliot to a young married lady with a number
of children, who had ventured into the paths of fiction
with a very charming first work in the shape of a
novel. The great novelist fixed a serious gaze upon
the neophyte and asked, "Did you not then find
enough to interest you in your family ? " We are
disposed to say, Was not the work of planting towns
and organising a new empire, or at least a great
province, enough to emancipate even a confirmed
story-teller from hankering after that vocation ? But
indeed it does not seem to have been enough, for here
we find the planter of new cities returning in his first
moment of leisure to the occupation still more dear to
him. And it was not even the tale of ' The Settlers,'
for which there might have been many encourage-
ments, but an old and worn-out vein of the utmost
conventionality to which he turned his thoughts.
John Gait to W. Blackioood.
Guelph, 2Uh Nov. 1828.
I have been for some time intending to request you to an-
nounce a work which I have nearly finished—not the historical
notes on the Two Canadas, for that I must postpone till I have
some opportunity of revisiting the Colonial Office, but a view of
the world of London, under the title of ' My
Landlady and her
Lodgers.' I think it will be quite as good as anything I haye
ever done, and be a little like the ' Annals,' with more variety
of incident and character. I had planned another, 'The
Settlers,' intending to give a picture of the progress of a settle-