continued to have the sole charge of Lower Canada until 1850, when he secured the constitution of the diocese of Montreal, he himself retaining the diocese of Quebec, by far the poorer and more laborious of the two. During the greater part of his ministerial career he had to perform long, tedious, and oftentimes dangerous journeys into the interior of a wild and unsettled country, paying frequent visits to the north-west territory, the eastern townships, the Magdalen Islands, and the shores of Labrador; also to Rupert's Land, some three thousand six hundred miles, in an Indian canoe. He came to England in 1853 to confer with Dr. William Grant Broughton [q. v.], the metropolitan of Australasia, on the subject of synodical action in colonial churches, and he received the degree of D.C.L. at Oxford. The greatest of his works was the establishment in 1845 of the Lower Canadian Church University, Bishop's College, Lennoxville, for the education of clergymen. Mountain was a learned theologian, an elegant scholar, and powerful preacher. He died at Bardfield, Quebec, on 6 Jan. 1863.
Besides many single sermons, charges, and pamphlets, Mountain wrote:
- ‘The Journal of the Bishop of Montreal during a Visit to the Church Missionary Society's North-West American Mission,’ 1845; 2nd edit. 1849.
- ‘Songs of the Wilderness; being a Collection of Poems,’ 1846.
- ‘Journal of a Visitation in a Portion of the Diocese, by the Lord Bishop of Montreal,’ 1847.
- ‘Sermons published at the Request of the Synod of the Diocese,’ 1865.
[Armine W. Mountain's Memoir of G. J. Mountain, late Bishop of Quebec, 1866, with portrait; Morgan's Bibliotheca Canadensis, 1867, pp. 284–7; Appleton's American Biography, 1888, iv. 447–8, with portrait; Illustr. London News, 1862, xli. 576, 587; Gent. Mag. March 1863, pp. 388–9; Roe's First Hundred Years of the Diocese of Quebec; Taylor's The Last Three Bishops appointed by the Crown for the Anglican Church of Canada, 1870, pp. 131–86, with portrait.]
MOUNTAIN, JACOB (1749–1825), protestant bishop of Quebec, third son of Jacob Mountain of Thwaite Hall, Norfolk, by Ann, daughter of Jehoshaphat Postle of Wymondham, was born at Thwaite Hall on 30 Dec. 1749, and educated at Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1774, M.A. 1777, and D.D. 1793. In 1779 he was elected a fellow of his college, and, after holding the living of St. Andrew, Norwich, was presented to the vicarages of Holbeach, Lincolnshire, and Buckden, Huntingdonshire (which he held together), and on 1 June 1788 was installed Castor prebendary in Lincoln Cathedral. These preferments he owed to the friendship of William Pitt, who also, on Dr. Tomline's recommendation, procured for him the appointment of the first Anglican bishop of Quebec. He was consecrated at Lambeth Palace on 7 July 1793. At that time there were only nine clergymen of the church of England in Canada at his death there were sixty-one. During the succeeding thirty years Mountain raised the church to a flourishing condition (cf. Dr. Henry Roe, Story of the First Hundred Years of the Diocese of Quebec). He promoted missions and the erection of churches in all populous places. These he visited regularly, even when suffering from age and infirmities. The cathedral church at Quebec, which contains a monument to his memory, was erected under his auspices. He died at Marchmont House, Quebec, 16 June 1825. He married a daughter of John Kentish of Bardfield Hall, Essex, and left, with two daughters, five sons, of whom George Jehoshaphat Mountain and Armine Simcoe Mountain are separately noticed.
Mountain published 'Poetical Reveries,' 1777, besides separate sermons and charges.
[Appleton's American Biog. 1888, iv. 447; Bibliotheca Canadensis, 1867, p. 287; Gent. Mag. August 1825, p. 177; Quebec Gazette. June 1825; Church Times. 1 Sept. 1893.]
MOUNTAIN, Mrs. ROSOMAN (1768?–1841), vocalist and actress, was born in London about 1768. Her parents, named Wilkinson, were circus performers, and they appear to have named their child after one of the proprietors of Sadler's Wells. A brother, and Isabella, another member of the Wilkinson family, besides wire-dancing, played the musical glasses, the latter at Sadler's Wells about 1762. Charles Dibdin prepared Rosoman for the stage, and she seems to have made a few unimportant appearances at the Haymarket in 1782. On 4 Nov. of that year she achieved some success at the Royal Circus (afterwards the Surrey Theatre) in a burletta, 'Mount Parnassus,' in which she acted with other of Dibdin's pupils. ' Miss Decamp, Mrs. Mountain, and Mrs. Bland,' writes Charles Dibdin, 'are deservedly favourites as singers, merely because I took care they should be taught nothing more than correctness, expression, and an unaffected pronunciation of the words; the infallible and only way to perfect a singer' (Professional Life}. The performances were considered marvellous; they continued, under the generic title' The Fairy World,' for several years, and little Miss Wilkinson had a
