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P. 71.--B. Sulte, "Histoire des Canadiens Fran?ais," etc.

P. 71.--Abb? Casgrain's Works.

P. 71.--Kingsford, Dionne, Gosselin, Tass?, Tanguay, and other Canadian historians.

P. 72.--A Canadian Bibliography.

P. 72.--Later Canadian Poets, 1867-1893: Fr?chette, LeMay, W. Campbell Roberts, Lampman, Mair, O'Brien, McColl, Suite, Lockhart, Murray, Edgar, O'Hagan, Davin, etc. Collections of Canadian poems. Citations from Canadian poems.

P. 78.--"Laura Secord's Warning," from Mrs. Edgar's "Ridout Letters."

P. 79.--Australian poets and novelists.

P. 80.--Howe's "Flag of Old England."

P. 81.--Canadian essayists: Stewart, Grant, Griffin and others.

P. 81.--W. Kirby's "Golden Dog" and other works.

P. 82.--Major Richardson's "Wacousta," etc.

P. 82.--Marmette's "Fran?ois de Bienville," and other romances.

P. 82.--De Gasp?'s "Anciens Canadiens."

P. 82.--Mrs. Catherwood's works of fiction.

P. 83.--Gilbert Parker's writings.

P. 83.--DeMille's fiction.

P. 83.--Sara Jeannette Duncan's "A Social Departure," etc.

P. 83.--Matthew Arnold on Literature and Science.

P. 83.--Principal Grant's Address to Royal Society.

P. 84.--Sir J. W. Dawson's scientific labours.

P. 84.--Elkanah Billings as scientist.

P. 84.--Origin of Royal Society of Canada.

P. 84.--Sir D. Wilson, T. S. Hunt and Mr. Chauveau.

P. 84.--Canadian Literary and Scientific Societies.

P. 85.--The Earl of Derby's farewell address to the Royal Society. His opinion of its work and usefulness.

P. 86.--S. E. Dawson on Tennyson.

P. 86.--The old "Canadian Monthly."

P. 86.--Form of Royal Society Transactions.

P. 86.--Goldwin Smith on the study of the Classics.

P. 87.--Canadian Libraries.

P. 87.--List of artists in Canada. Native born and adopted. Art societies. Influence of French school. Canadian artists at the World's Fair. J. W. L. Forster on Canadian art.

P. 89.--Architectural art in Canada. List of prominent public buildings noted for beauty and symmetry of form.

P. 91.--"Fidelis."

OUR INTELLECTUAL STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS.

A SHORT REVIEW OF LITERATURE, EDUCATION AND ART IN CANADA

I cannot more appropriately commence this address than by a reference to an oration delivered seven years ago in the great hall of a famous university which stands beneath the stately elms of Cambridge, in the old "Bay State" of Massachusetts: a noble seat of learning in which Canadians take a deep interest, not only because some of their sons have completed their education within its walls, but because it represents that culture and scholarship which know no national lines of separation, but belong to the world's great Federation of Learning. The orator was a man who, by his deep philosophy, his poetic genius, his broad patriotism, his love for England, her great literature and history, had won for himself a reputation not equalled in some respects by any other citizen of the United States of these later times. In the course of a brilliant oration in honour of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of Harvard, James Russell Lowell took occasion to warn his audience against the tendency of a prosperous democracy "towards an overweening confidence in itself and its home-made methods, an overestimate of material success and a corresponding indifference to the things of the mind." He did not deny that wealth is a great fertilizer of civilization and of the arts that beautify it; that wealth is an excellent thing since it means power, leisure and liberty; "but these," he went on to say, "divorced from culture, that is, from intelligent purpose, become the very mockery of their own essence, not goods, but evils fatal to their possessor, and bring with them, like the Nibelungen Hoard, a doom instead of a blessing." "I am saddened," he continued, "when I see our success as a nation measured by the number of acres under tillage, or of bushels of wheat exported; for the real value of a country must be weighed in scales more delicate than the balance of trade. The garners of Sicily are empty now, but the bees from all climes still fetch honey from the tiny garden-plot of Theocritus. On a map of the world you may cover Judea with your thumb, Athens with a finger-tip, and neither of them figures in the Prices Current; but they still lord it in the thought and action of every civilized man. Did not Dante cover with his hood all that was Italy six hundred years ago? And if we go back a century, where was Germany outside of Weimar? Material success is good, but only as the necessary preliminary of better things. The measure of a nation's true success is the amount it has contributed to the thought, the moral energy, the intellectual happiness, the spiritual hope and consolation of mankind."

These eloquently suggestive words, it must be remembered, were addressed by a great American author to an audience, made up of eminent scholars and writers, in the principal academic seat of that New England which has given birth to Emerson, Longfellow, Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Hawthorne, Holmes, Parkman, and many others, representing the brightest thought and intellect of this continent. These writers were the product of the intellectual development of the many years that had passed since the pilgrims landed on the historic rock of Plymouth. Yet, while Lowell could point to such a brilliant array of historians, essayists, poets and novelists, as I have just named, as the latest results of New England culture, he felt compelled to utter a word of remonstrance against that spirit of materialism that was then as now abroad in the land, tending to stifle those generous intellectual aspirations which are best calculated to make a people truly happy and great.

Let us now apply these remarks of the eminent American poet and thinker to Canada--to ourselves, whose history is even older than that of New England; contemporaneous rather with that of Virginia, since Champlain landed on the heights of Quebec and laid the foundations of the ancient capital only a year after the English adventurers of the days of King James set their feet on the banks of the river named after that sovereign and commenced the old town which has long since disappeared before the tides of the ocean that stretches away beyond the shores of the Old Dominion. If we in Canada are open to the same charge of attaching too much importance to material things, are we able at the same time to point to as notable achievements in literature as results of the three centuries that have nearly passed since the foundation of New France? I do not suppose that the most patriotic Canadian, however ready to eulogize his own country, will make an effort to claim an equality with New England in this respect; but, if indeed we feel it necessary to offer any comparison that would do us justice, it would be with that Virginia whose history is contemporaneous with that of French Canada. Statesmanship rather than Letters has been the pride and ambition of the Old Dominion, its brightest and highest achievement. Virginia has been the mother of great orators and great presidents, and her men of letters sink into insignificance alongside of those of New England. It may be said, too, of Canada, that her history in the days of the French regime, during the struggle for responsible government, as well as at the birth of confederation, gives us the names of men of statesmanlike designs and of patriotic purpose. From the days of Champlain to the establishment of the confederation, Canada has had the services of men as eminent in their respective spheres, and as successful in the attainment of popular rights, in moulding the educational and political institutions of the country, and in laying broad and deep the foundations of a new nationality across half a continent, as those great Virginians to whom the world is ever ready to pay its meed of respect. These Virginian statesmen won their fame in the large theatre of national achievement--in laying the basis of the most remarkable federal republic the world has ever seen; whilst Canadian public men have laboured with equal earnestness and ability in that far less conspicuous and brilliant arena of colonial development, the eulogy of which has to be written in the histories of the future.

Let me now ask you to follow me for a short time whilst I review some of the most salient features of our intellectual progress since the days Canada entered on its career of competition in the civilization of this continent. So far there have been three well defined eras of development in the country now known as the Dominion of Canada. First, there was the era of French Canadian occupation which in many respects had its heroic and picturesque features. Then, after the cession of Canada to England, came that era of political and constitutional struggle for a larger measure of public liberty which ended in the establishment of responsible government about half a century ago. Then we come to that era which dates from the confederation of the provinces--an era of which the first quarter of a century only has passed, of which the signs are still full of promise, despite the prediction of gloomy thinkers, if Canadians remain true to themselves and face the future with the same courage and confidence that have distinguished the past.

As I have just said, the days of the French regime were in a sense days of heroic endeavour, since we see in the vista of the past a small colony whose total population at no period exceeded eighty thousand souls, chiefly living on the banks of the St. Lawrence, between Quebec and Montreal, and contending against great odds for the supremacy on the continent of America. The pen of Francis Parkman has given a vivid picture of those days when bold adventurers unlocked the secrets of this Canadian Dominion, pushed into the western wilderness, followed unknown rivers, and at last found a way to the waters of that southern gulf where Spain had long before, in the days of Grijalva, Cortez and Pineda, planted her flag and won treasures of gold and silver from an unhappy people who soon learned to curse the day when the white men came to the fair islands of the south and the rich country of Mexico. In these days the world, with universal acclaim has paid its tribute of admiration to the memory of a great Discoverer who had the courage of his convictions and led the way to the unknown lands beyond the Azores and the Canaries. This present generation has forgiven him much in view of his heroism in facing the dangers of unknown seas and piercing their mysteries. His purpose was so great, and his success so conspicuous, that both have obscured his human weakness. In some respects he was wiser than the age in which he lived; in others he was the product of the greed and the superstition of that age; but we who owe him so much forget the frailty of the man in the sagacity of the Discoverer. As Canadians, however, now review the character of the great Genoese, and of his compeers and successors in the opening up of this continent, they must, with pride, come to the conclusion that none of these men can compare in nobility of purpose, in sincere devotion to God, King and Country, with Champlain, the sailor of Brouage, who became the founder of Quebec and the father of New France.

In the daring ventures of Marquette, Jolliet, La Salle and Tonty, in the stern purpose of Frontenac, in the far-reaching plans of La Galissoni?re, in the military genius of Montcalm, the historian of the present time has at his command the most attractive materials for his pen. But we cannot expect to find the signs of intellectual development among a people where there was not a single printing press, where freedom of thought and action was repressed by a paternal absolutism, where the struggle for life was very bitter up to the last hours of French supremacy in a country constantly exposed to the misfortunes of war, and too often neglected by a king who thought more of his mistresses than of his harassed and patient subjects across the sea. Yet that memorable period--days of struggle in many ways--was the origin of a large amount of literature which we, in these times, find of the deepest interest and value from a historic point of view. The English colonies of America cannot present us with any books which, for faithful narrative and simplicity of style, bear comparison with the admirable works of Champlain, explorer and historian, or with those of the genial and witty advocate, Marc Lescarbot, names that can never be forgotten on the picturesque heights of Quebec, or on the banks of the beautiful basin of Annapolis. Is there a Canadian or American writer who is not under a deep debt of obligation to the clear-headed and industrious Jesuit traveller, Charlevoix, the Nestor of French Canadian history? The only historical writer that can at all surpass him in New England was the loyalist Governor Hutchinson, and he published his books at a later time when the French dominion had disappeared with the fall of Quebec. To the works just mentioned we may add the books of Gabriel Sagard, and of Boucher, the governor of Three Rivers and founder of a still eminent French Canadian family; that remarkable collection of authentic historic narrative, known as the Jesuit Relations; even that tedious Latin compilation by P?re du Creux, the useful narrative by La Potherie, the admirable account of Indian life and customs by the Jesuit Lafitau, and that now very rare historical account of the French colony, the "Etablissement de la Foy dans la Nouvelle France," written by the Recollet le Clercq, probably aided by Frontenac. In these and other works, despite their diffuseness in some cases, we have a library of historical literature, which, when supplemented by the great stores of official documents still preserved in the French archives, is of priceless value as a true and minute record of the times in which the authors lived, or which they described from the materials to which they alone had access. It may be said with truth that none of these writers were Canadians in the sense that they were born or educated in Canada, but still they were the product of the life, the hardships and the realities of New France--it was from this country they drew the inspiration that gave vigour and colour to their writings. New England, as I have already said, never originated a class of writers who produced work of equal value, or indeed of equal literary merit. Religious and polemic controversy had the chief attraction for the gloomy, disputatious puritan native of Massachusetts and the adjoining colonies. Cotton Mather was essentially a New England creation, and if quantity were the criterion of literary merit then he was the most distinguished author of his century; for it is said that indefatigable antiquarians have counted up the titles of nearly four hundred books and pamphlets by this industrious writer. His principal work, however, was the "Magnalia Christi Americana, or Ecclesiastical History of New England from 1620 to 1698," a large folio, remarkable as a curious collection of strange conceits, forced witticisms, and prolixity of narrative, in which the venturesome reader soon finds himself so irretrievably mystified and lost that he rises from the perusal with wonderment that so much learning, as was evidently possessed by the author, could be so used to bewilder the world of letters. The historical knowledge is literally choked up with verbiage and mannerisms. Even prosy du Creux becomes tolerable at times compared with the garrulous Puritan author.

Though books were rarely seen, and secular education was extremely defective as a rule throughout the French colony, yet at a very early period in its history remarkable opportunities were afforded for the education of a priesthood and the cult of the principles of the Roman Catholic religion among those classes who were able to avail themselves of the facilities offered by the Jesuit College, which was founded at Quebec before even Harvard at Cambridge, or by the famous Great and Lesser Seminaries in the same place, in connection with which, in later times, rose the University with which is directly associated the name of the most famous Bishop of the French regime. The influence of such institutions was not simply in making Canada a most devoted daughter of that great Church, which has ever exercised a paternal and even absolute care of its people, but also in discouraging a purely materialistic spirit and probably keeping alive a taste for letters among a very small class, especially the priests, who, in politics as in society, have been always a controlling element in the French province. Evidences of some culture and intellectual aspirations in the social circles of the ancient capital attracted the surprise of travellers who visited the country before the close of the French dominion. "Science and the fine arts," wrote Charlevoix, "have their turn, and conversation does not fail. The Canadians breathe from their birth an air of liberty, which makes them very pleasant in the intercourse of life, and our language is nowhere more purely spoken." La Galissoni?re, who was an associate member of the French Academy of Science, and the most highly cultured governor ever sent out by France, spared no effort to encourage a systematic study of scientific pursuits in Canada. Dr. Michel Sarrazin, who was a practising physician in Quebec for nearly half a century, devoted himself most assiduously to the natural history of the colony, and made some valuable contributions to the French Academy, of which he was a correspondent. The Swedish botanist, Peter Kalm, who visited America in the middle of the last century, was impressed with the liking for scientific study which he observed in the French colony. "I have found," he wrote, "that eminent persons, generally speaking, in this country, have much more taste for natural history and literature than in the English colonies, where the majority of people are entirely engrossed in making their fortune, whilst science is as a rule held in very light esteem." Strange to say, he ignores in this passage the scientific labours of Franklin, Bartram and others he had met in Pennsylvania. As a fact such evidences of intellectual enlightenment as Kalm and Charlevoix mentioned were entirely exceptional in the colony, and never showed themselves beyond the walls of Quebec or Montreal. The province, as a whole, was in a state of mental sluggishness. The germs of intellectual life were necessarily dormant among the mass of the people, for they never could produce any rich fruition until they were freed from the spirit of absolutism which distinguished French supremacy, and were able to give full expression to the natural genius of their race under the inspiration of the liberal government of England in these later times.

Passing from the heroic days of Canada, which, if it could hardly in the nature of things originate a native literature, at least inspired a brilliant succession of historians, essayists and poets in much later times, we come now to that period of constitutional and political development which commenced with the rule of England. It does not fall within the scope of this address to dwell on the political struggles which showed their intensity in the rebellion of 1837-8, and reached their fruition in the concession of parliamentary government, in the large sense of the term, some years later. These struggles were carried on during times when there was only a sparse population chiefly centred in the few towns of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Upper and Lower Canada, on the shores of the Atlantic, on the banks of the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario, and not extending beyond the peninsula of the present province of Ontario. The cities, or towns rather, of Halifax, St. John, Quebec, Montreal, Kingston and York, were then necessarily the only centres of intellectual life. Education was chiefly under the control of religious bodies or in the hands of private teachers. In the rural districts it was at the lowest point possible, and the great system of free schools which has of late years extended through the Dominion--and is the chief honour of Ontario--was never dreamed of in those times of sluggish growth and local apathy, when communication between the distant parts of the country was slow and wretched, when the conditions of life were generally very hard and rude, when the forest still covered the greater portion of the most fertile districts of Ontario, though here and there the pioneer's axe could be heard from morn to eve hewing out little patches of sunlight, so many glimpses of civilization and better times amid the wildness of a new land even then full of promise.

The newspapers of those days were very few and came only at uncertain times to the home of the farmer by the side of some stream or amid the dense forest, or to the little hamlets that were springing up in favoured spots, and represented so many radiating influences of intelligence on the borders of the great lakes and their tributary streams, on the Atlantic seaboard, or on the numerous rivers that form so many natural highways to the people of the maritime provinces. These newspapers were for years mostly small quarto or folio sheets, in which the scissors played necessarily the all-important part; but there was, nevertheless, before 1840 in the more pretentious journals of the large towns, some good writing done by thoughtful men who studied their questions, and helped to atone for the very bitter vindictive partisan attacks on opponents that too frequently sullied the press in those times of fierce conflict. Books were only found in the homes of the clergy or of the official classes, and these were generally old editions and rarely the latest publications of the time. Montreal and Quebec, for many years, were the only places where bookstores and libraries of more than a thousand volumes could be seen. It was not until 1813 that a successful effort was made to establish a "social library" at Kingston, Bath, and some other places in the Midland district. Toronto had no library worth mentioning until 1836. What culture existed in those rude days was to be hunted up among the clergy, especially of the Church of England, the Roman Catholic priests of Lower Canada, and the official classes of the large towns. Some sermons that have come down to us, in pamphlets of very common paper--and very few were printed in those days when postage was dear and bookselling was not profitable--have no pretensions to originality of thought or literary style: sermons in remarkable contrast with the brilliant and suggestive utterances of such modern pulpit orators as Professor Clarke, of Trinity. The exhaustive and, generally, closely reasoned sermons of the Presbyterian divine had a special flavour of the Westminster confession and little of the versatility of preachers like Principal Grant in these later times when men are attempting to make even dogma more genial, and to understand the meaning of the sermon in the Mount. Then, as always in Canada, there were found among the clergy of all denominations hardworking, self-denying priests and missionaries who brought from time to time to some remote settlement of the provinces spiritual consolation and to many a household, long deprived of the intellectual nourishment of other days, an opportunity of conversing on subjects which in the stern daily routine of their lives in a new country were seldom or ever talked of. It was in the legislative halls of the provinces that the brightest intellect naturally found scope for its display, and at no subsequent period of the political history of Canada were there more fervid, earnest orators than appeared in the days when the battle for responsible government was at its height. The names of Nelson, Papineau, Howe, Baldwin, Wilmot, Johnstone, Young, Robinson, Rolph and Mackenzie recall the era when questions of political controversy and political freedom stimulated mental development among that class which sought and found the best popular opportunities for the display of their intellectual gifts in the legislative halls in the absence of a great printing press and a native literature. Joseph Howe's speeches displayed a wide culture, an original eloquence, and a patriotic aspiration beyond those of any other man of his time and generation, and would have done credit to the Senate of the United States, then in the zenith of its reputation as a body of orators and statesmen. It is an interesting fact that Howe, then printer and publisher, should have printed the first work of the only great humorist that Canada has yet produced. I mean of course "The Clockmaker," in which Judge Haliburton created "Sam Slick," a type of a Down-east Yankee pedlar who sold his wares by a judicious use of that quality which is sure to be appreciated the world over, "Soft sawder and human natur'." In this work, which has run through ever so many editions, and is still found on the shelves of every well-equipped library and bookstore, Sam Slick told some home truths to his somewhat self-satisfied countrymen who could not help laughing even if the humour touched them very keenly at times. Nova Scotia has changed much for the better since those dull times when the house of assembly was expected to be a sort of political providence, to make all the roads and bridges, and give good times and harvests; but even now there are some people cruel enough, after a visit to Halifax, to hint that there still is a grain of truth in the following reflection on the enterprise of that beautiful port: "How the folks to Halifax take it all out in talkin'--they talk of steam-boats, whalers and railroads--but they all end where they begin--in talk. I don't think I'd be out in my latitude if I was to say they beat the womankind at that. One feller says, I talk of goin' to England--another says, I talk of goin' to the country--while another says, I talk of goin' to sleep. If we Yankees happen to speak of such things we say, 'I'm right off down East;' or 'I'm away off South,' and away we go jist like a streak of lightnin'." This clever humourist also wrote the best history--one of his own province--that had been written in British North America up to that time--indeed it is still most readable, and worthy of a place in every library. In later days the Judge wrote many other books and became a member of the English House of Commons: but "Sam Slick" still remains the most signal illustration of his original genius.

It was in the years that followed the concession of responsible government that a new era dawned on Canada--an era of intellectual as well as material activity. Then common schools followed the establishment of municipal institutions in Ontario. Even the province of Quebec awoke from its sullen lethargy and assumed greater confidence in the future, as its statesmen gradually recognized the fact that the union of 1841 could be turned to the advantage of French Canada despite it having been largely based on the hope of limiting the development of French Canadian institutions, and gradually leading the way to the assimilation of the two races. Political life still claimed the best talent and energy, as it has always done in this country; and, while Papineau soon disappeared from the arena where he had been, under a different condition of things, a powerful disturbing influence among his compatriots, men of greater discretion and wider statesmanship like Lafontaine, Morin and Cartier, took his place to the decided benefit of French Canada. Robert Baldwin, a tried and conservative reformer, yielded to the antagonistic influences that eventually arrayed themselves in his own party against him and retired to a privacy from which he never ventured until his death. William Lyon Mackenzie came back from exile and took a place once more in legislative halls only to find there was no longer scope for mere querulous agitators and restless politicians. Joseph Howe still devoted himself with untiring zeal to his countrymen in his native province, while Judge Wilmot, afterwards governor like the former in confederation days, delighted the people of New Brunswick with his rapid, fervid, scholarly eloquence. James W. Johnstone, long the leader of the Conservative party in Nova Scotia, remarkable for his great flow of language and argument; William Young, an astute politician; James Boyle Uniacke, with all the genius of an Irish orator; Laurence O'Connor Doyle, wit and Irishman; Samuel J. W. Archibald with his silver tongue, afterwards master of the rolls; Adams G. Archibald, polished gentleman; Leonard Tilley with his suavity of demeanour and skill as a politician; Charles Tupper with his great command of language, earnestness of expression and courage of conviction, were the leading exponents of the political opinions and of the culture and oratory of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In the upper provinces we had in addition to the names of the distinguished French Canadians I have already mentioned, those of John A. Macdonald, at all times a ready and incisive debater, a great party tactician, and a statesman of generous aspirations, who was destined to die very many years later with the knowledge that he had realized his conception of a federation uniting all the territory of British North America, from Sydney to Victoria, under one government. The names of Allan McNab, Francis Hincks, George Brown, George Etienne Cartier, Alexander Galt, D'Arcy McGee, Louis Sicotte, John Hillyard Cameron, Alexander Mackenzie, Seth Huntington, William McDougall, Antoine Dorion, Alexander Campbell, and of other men, eminent for their knowledge of finance, their powers as debaters, their graceful oratory, their legal acumen, their political skill and their intellectual achievements in their respective spheres, will be recalled by many of those who hear me, since the most eminent among them have but recently disappeared from the stage of active life.

As long as party government lasts in this country men will be divided into political divisions, and objection will be of course time and again taken to the methods by which these and other political leaders have achieved their party ends, and none of us will be always satisfied with the conclusions to which their at times overweening ambition has led them; but, taking them all in all, I believe for one who has lived all my life among politicians and statesmen that, despite their failings and weaknesses, the public men of our country in those days laboured on the whole conscientiously from their own points of view to make Canada happier and greater. Indeed, when I look around me and see what has been done in the face of great obstacles during a half century and less, I am bound to pay this tribute to those who laboured earnestly in the difficult and trying intellectual field of public life.

As I glance over my library shelves I find indeed that historical literature has continued since the days of Garneau and Ferland, to enlist the earnest and industrious study of Canadians with more or less success. In English Canada, John Charles Dent produced a work on the political development of Canada from the union of 1841 until the confederation of 1867, which was written with fairness and ability, but he was an Englishman by birth and education, though resident for many years in the city of Toronto. And here let me observe that though such men as Dent, Heavysege, Faillon, Daniel Wilson, Hunt, D'Arcy McGee and Goldwin Smith were not born or educated in Canada like Haliburton, Logan, J. W. Dawson, Joseph Howe, Wilmot, Cartier, Garneau, or Fr?chette, but only came to this country in the maturity of their mental powers, yet to men of their class the Dominion owes a heavy debt of gratitude for the ability and earnestness with which they have elevated the intellectual standard of the community where they have laboured. Although all of us may not be prepared to accept the conclusions of the historian, or approve the judgment of the political critic; although we may regret that a man of such deep scholarship and wide culture as Goldwin Smith has never yet been able to appreciate the Canadian or growing national sentiment of this dependency, yet who can doubt, laying aside all political or personal prejudice, that he, like the others I have named, has stimulated intellectual development in his adopted home, and so far has given us compensation for some utterances which, so many Canadians honestly believe, mar an otherwise useful and brilliant career. Such literary men have undoubtedly their uses, since they seem specially intended by a wise dispensation of affairs to cure us of too much self-complacency, and to prevent us from falling into a condition of mental stagnation by giving us from time to time abundant material for reflection. So much, by way of parenthesis, is due to the able men who have adopted Canada as their home and have been labouring in various vocations to stimulate the intellectual growth of this Dominion. A most accurate historical record of the same period of our history as that reviewed by Dent was made in French about the same time by Louis Turcotte of Quebec. Mr. Benjamin Sulte, a member of this society, has also given us the results of many years of conscientious research in his "Histoire des Canadiens," which is not so well known as it ought to be, probably on account of its cumbrous size and mode of publication. The Abb? Casgrain, also a member of the society and a most industrious author, has recently devoted himself with true French Canadian fervour to the days of Montcalm and L?vis, and by the aid of a large mass of original documents has thrown much light on a very interesting and important epoch of the history of America. Dr. Kingsford with patience and industry has continued his history of Canada, which is distinguished by accuracy and research. It is not my intention to enumerate all those names which merit remark in this connection, for this is not a collection of bibliographical notes, but simply a review of the more salient features of our intellectual development in the well-marked periods of our history. Indeed it is gratifying to us to know that the Royal Society comprises within its ranks nearly all the historical writers in Canada, and it would seem too much like pure egotism were I to dilate on their respective performances. Of poets since the days of Cr?mazie we have had our full proportion, and it is encouraging to know that the poems of Fr?chette,--whose best work has been crowned by the French Academy,--LeMay, Reade, Mair, Roberts, Bliss Carman, Wilfred Campbell and Lampman have gained recognition from time to time in the world of letters outside of Canada. We have yet to produce in English Canada a book of poems which can touch the sympathies and live on the lips of the world like those of Whittier and Longfellow, but we need not despair since even in the country which gave these birth they have not their compeers. Some even declare that the only bard of promise who appears in these days to touch that chord of nature which makes the whole world kin is James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, despite his tendency to exaggerate provincial dialect and make his true poetic genius too subordinate to what becomes at last an affectation and a mere mannerism which wearies by its very repetition. Even in England there is hesitation in choosing a poet laureate; there are Swinburne, Morris and other poets, but not another Tennyson, and it has been even suggested that the honour might pass to a master of poetic prose, John Ruskin, whose brilliant genius has been ever devoted to a lofty idealism which would make the world much happier and better. At the present time Canadian poets obtain a place with regularity in the best class of American magazines, and not infrequently their verse reaches a higher level than the majority of poetic aspirants who appear in the same field of poetry; but for one I am not an ardent admirer of American magazine poems which appear too often mere machine work and not the results of that true poetic inspiration which alone can achieve permanent fame.

"In my heart are many chambers through which I wander free, Some are furnished, some are empty, some are sombre, some are light; Some are open to all comers, and of some I keep the key, And I enter in the stillness of the night."

I think if we compare the best Canadian poems with the same class of literature in Australia the former do not at all lose by the comparison. Thanks to the thoughtfulness of a friend in South Australia I have had many opportunities of late of studying the best work of Australian writers, chiefly poets and novelists, and have come to the conclusion that at least the poets of both hemispheres--for to fiction we cannot make even a pretense--reflect credit on each country. In one respect indeed Canadians can claim a superiority over their fellow-citizens of the British Empire in that far off Australian land, and that is, in the fact that we have poets, and historians, and essayists, who write the languages of France and England with purity and even elegance; that the grace and precision of the French tongue have their place in this country alongside the vigorous and copious expression of the English language. More than that, the Canadians have behind them a history which is well calculated to stimulate writers to give utterance to national sentiment. I mean national in the sense of being thoroughly imbued with a love for the country, its scenery, its history and its aspirations. The people of that great island continent possess great natural beauties and riches--flowers and fruits of every kind flourish there in rare profusion, and gold and gems are among the treasures of the soil, but its scenery is far less varied and picturesque than ours and its history is but of yesterday compared with that of Canada. Australians cannot point to such historic ground as is found from Louisbourg to Quebec, or from Montreal to Champlain, the battle ground of nations whose descendants now live under one flag, animated by feelings of a common interest and a common aspiration for the future!

Perhaps if I were at any time inclined to be depressed as to the future of Canada, I should find some relief in those poems by Canadian authors which take frequently an elevated and patriotic range of thought and vision, and give expression to aspirations worthy of men born and living in this country. When some men doubt the future and would see us march into the ranks of other states, with heads bowed down in confession of our failure to hold our own on this continent and build up a new nation always in the closest connection with England, I ask them to turn to the poems of Joseph Howe and read that inspiring poetic tribute to the mother country, "All hail to the day when the Britons came over"--

"Every flash of her genius our pathway enlightens, Every field she explores we are beckoned to tread, Each laurel she gathers, our future day brightens-- We joy with her living and mourn with her dead."

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