PREFATORY NOTE.
 This monograph on the intellectual development of the Dominion was delivered in substance as the presidential address to the Royal Society of Canada at its May meeting of 1893, in Ottawa. Since then the author has given the whole subject a careful revision, and added a number of bibliographical and other literary notes which could not conveniently appear in the text of the address, but are likely to interest those who wish to follow more closely the progress of culture in a country still struggling with the difficulties of the material development of half a continent. This little volume, as the title page shows, is intended as the commencement of a series of historical and other essays which will be periodically reproduced, in this more convenient form for the general reader, from the large quarto volumes of the Royal Society of Canada, where they first appear.
Ottawa, 1st October, 1893.
Chapter 1
 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[1][A] 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 overestimate2 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 materialism3 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.[2] 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 is4 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.
[A] In all cases the references are to the Notes in the Appendix.
 
Chapter 2
 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, Cortez5 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 Galissonière, 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 historic6 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,[3] or with those of the genial and witty advocate, Marc Lescarbot,[4] 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,[5] 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.[6] To the works just mentioned we may add the books of Gabriel Sagard,[7] and of Boucher, the governor of Three Rivers and founder of a still eminent French Canadian family;[8] that remarkable collection of authentic historic narrative, known as the Jesuit Relations;[9] even that tedious Latin compilation by Père du Creux,[10] the useful narrative by La Potherie,[11] the admirable account of Indian life and customs by the Jesuit Lafitau,[11a] 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,[12] 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 controversy7 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,"[13] 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 the8 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 Galissonière, 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,[13a] 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.[13b] 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.
Chapter 3
 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,[14] 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,[15] 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 great10 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.[16] 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 nourishment11 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[17] 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,"[18] 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 in12 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[19]—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.
During this period, however, apart from the two works to which I have referred, we look in vain for any original literature worthy of special mention. A history of Canada written by William Smith,[20] a son of an eminent chief justice of New York, and subsequently of Canada, was published in excellent style for those days as early as 1815 at Quebec, but it has no special value except to the collector of old and rare books. Bouchette's topographical and geographical account of Canada[21] illustrated the ability and zeal of an eminent French Canadian, who deserved the thanks of his country, but these well printed books were, after all, mere compilations and came from the English press. Pamphlets were numerous enough, and some of them had literary skill, but they had, in the majority of cases, no permanent value except to the historian or antiquarian of the present day who must sift out all sorts of material and study every phase and incident of the times he has chosen for his theme. Michel Bibaud wrote a history of French Canada,[22] which no one reads in these days, and the most of the other works that emanated from the Canadian press, like Thompson's "War of 1812,"[23] are chiefly valued by the historical collector. It was not to be expected that in a relatively poor country, still in the infancy of its development, severely tried by political controversies, with a13 small population scattered over a long stretch of territory, from Sydney to Niagara, there could be any intellectual stimulus or literary effort except what was represented in newspapers like the Gazette of Montreal—which has always maintained a certain dignity of style in its long journalistic career—the Gazette and the Canadien, of Quebec, the Nova Scotian of Halifax, or displayed itself in keen contests in the legislatures or court-houses of a people delighting always in such displays as there were made of mental power and natural eloquence. From a literary point of view our American neighbours had, during this period, left us away behind, in fact no comparison can be made between the two countries; laying aside the original creation of Sam Slick. Towards the close of the eighteenth century Belknap published his admirable history of New Hampshire,[24] while the third volume of Hutchinson's history of Massachusetts appeared in 1828, to close a work of rare merit alike for careful research, philosophic acuteness and literary charm. That admirable collection of political and constitutional essays known as the "Federalist" had attained a wide circulation and largely influenced the destinies of the union under the constitution of 1783. Chief Justice Marshall illumined the bench by his great judicial decisions which have won a remarkable place in legal literature, on account of their close, acute reasoning, breadth of knowledge, insight into great constitutional principles, and their immediate influence on the political development of the federal republic. Washington Irving published, as far back as 1819, his "Sketch Book," in which appeared the original creation of Rip Van Winkle, and followed it up with other works which recall Addison's delightful style, and gave him a fame abroad that no later American writer has ever surpassed. Cooper's romances began to appear in 1821, and Bancroft published in 1834 the first volume of what is a great history despite its somewhat rhetorical and ambitious style. Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales" appeared in 1835, but his fame was to be won in later years when he wrote the "Scarlet Letter" and the "House of Seven Gables," the most original and quaint productions that New England genius has yet produced. If I linger for a moment among these men it is14 because they were not merely American by the influence of their writings; but wherever the English tongue is spoken and English literature is read these writers of a past generation, as it may be said of others of later times, claim the gratitude of the untold thousands whom they have instructed and helped in many a weary and sad, as well as idle hour. They were not Canadians, but they illustrated the genius of this continent of ours.
 
Chapter 4
 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.15 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, the16 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.
But this period which brought so many bright intellects into the activities of political life was distinguished also, not merely for the material advance in industry, but notably for some performance in the less hazardous walk of literature. The newspaper press with the progress of population, the increase of wealth, the diffusion of education, the construction of railways and telegraph lines, and the development of political liberty, found itself stimulated to new energy and enterprise. A daily press now commenced to meet the necessities of the larger and wealthier cities and towns. It must be admitted, however, that from a strictly intellectual point of view there was not in some respects a marked advance in the tone and style of the leading public journals. Political partisanship ran extremely high in those days—higher than it has ever since—and grosser personalities than have ever characterized newspapers in this country sullied the editorial columns of leading exponents of public opinion. No doubt there was much brilliant and forcible writing, despite the acrimony and abuse that were too often considered more necessary than incisive argument and logical reasoning when a political opponent had to be met. It was rarely that one could get at the whole truth of a question by reading only one newspaper; it was necessary to take two or three or more on different sides of politics in order to obtain even an accurate idea of the debates in the legislative halls. A Liberal or Conservative journal would consider it beneath its legitimate functions even as a newspaper to report with any fulness the speeches of its political adversaries. Of course this is not newspaper editing in the proper sense of the phrase. It is not the English method assuredly, since the London Times, the best example of a well-equipped and well-conducted newspaper, has always considered it necessary to give17 equal prominence to the speeches of Peel, Russell, Palmerston, Derby, Disraeli, Gladstone—of all the leaders irrespective of party. Even in these days of heated controversy on the Irish question one can always find in the columns of the London press fair and accurate reports of the speeches of Gladstone, Balfour, McCarthy, Chamberlain, Morley and Blake. This is the sound basis on which true and honest journalism must always rest if it is to find its legitimate reward, not in the fickle smiles of the mere party follower, but in the support of that great public which can best repay the enterprise and honesty of a true newspaper. Still, despite this violent partisanship to which bright intellects lowered themselves, and the absence of that responsibility to public opinion expected from its active teachers, the press of Canada, during the days of which I am speaking, kept pace in some essential respects with the material progress of the country, and represented too well the tone and spirit of the mass in the country where the rudiments of culture were still rough and raw. Public intelligence, however, was being gradually diffused, and according as the population increased, and the material conditions of the country improved, a literature of some merit commenced to show itself. The poems of Crémazie,[25] of Chauveau,[26] of Howe,[27] of Sangster[28] and others, were imbued with a truly Canadian spirit—with a love for Canada, its scenery, its history and its traditions, which entitled them to a larger audience than they probably ever had in this or other countries. None of those were great poets, but all of them were more or less gifted with a measure of true poetic genius, the more noteworthy because it showed itself in the rawness and newness of a colonial life. Amid the activities of a very busy period the poetic instinct of Canadians constantly found some expression. One almost now forgotten poet who was engaged in journalism in Montreal wrote an ambitious drama, "Saul," which was described at the time by a British critic as "a drama treated with great poetic power and depth of psychological knowledge which are often quite startling;" and the author followed it up with other poems, displaying also much imagination and feeling, but at no time reaching the ears of a large and appreciative audience. We cannot,18 however, claim Charles Heavysege[29] as a product of Canadian soil and education, for he was a man of mature age when he made his home in this country, and his works were in no wise inspired by Canadian sentiment, scenery or aspiration. In history Canadians have always shown some strength, and perhaps this was to be expected in view of the fact that political and historical literature—such works as Hamilton's "Federalist" or Todd's "Parliamentary Government"[30]—naturally engages the attention of active intellects in a new country at a time when its institutions have to be moulded, and it is necessary to collect precedents and principles from the storehouse of the past for the assistance of the present. A most useful narrative of the political occurrences in Lower Canada, from the establishment of legislative institutions until the rebellion of 1837-38 and the union of 1841, was written by Mr. Robert Christie, long a publicist of note and a member of the assembly of the province. While it has no claim to literary style it has the great merit of stating the events of the day with fairness and of citing at length numerous original documents bearing on the text.[31] In French Canada the names of Garneau[32] and Ferland[33] have undoubtedly received their full meed of praise for their clearness of style, industry of research, and scholarly management of their subject. Now that the political passion that so long convulsed the public mind in this country has disappeared with the causes that gave it birth, one is hardly prepared to make as much a hero of Papineau as Garneau attempted in his assuredly great book, while the foundation of a new Dominion and the dawn of an era of larger political life, has probably given a somewhat sectional character to such historical work. Still, despite its intense French Canadian spirit, Garneau's volumes notably illustrate the literary instinct and intellectual strength which have always been distinguishing features of the best productions of the able and even brilliant men who have devoted themselves to literature with marked success among their French Canadian countrymen, who are wont to pay a far deeper homage to such literary efforts than the colder, less impulsive English Canadian character has ever shown itself disposed to give to those who have been equally worthy of recognition in the English-speaking provinces.
Chapter 5
 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.[34] 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 Fréchette, 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 most20 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.[35] 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.[36] The Abbé 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 Lévis, 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.[37] Dr. Kingsford with patience and industry has continued his history of Canada, which is distinguished by accuracy and research.[38] 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,[39] 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 Crémazie we have had our full proportion, and it is encouraging to know that the poems of Fréchette,—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.[40][B] 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 exaggerate21 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.
The poems of the well known American authors, Aldrich, Gilder and Stedman, have certainly an easy rhythmical flow and an artistic finish which the majority of Canadian poetic aspirants should study with far more closeness. At the same time it may be said that even these artists do not often surpass in poetic thought the best productions of the Canadians to whom I have referred as probably illustrating most perfectly the highest development so far among us of this department of belles-lettres. It is not often that one comes across more exquisitely conceived poems than some of those written by Mr. John Reade, whom the laborious occupation of journalism and probably the past indifference of a Canadian public to Canadian poetry have for a long while diverted from a literary field where it would seem he should have won a wider fame. Among the verses which one can read time and again are those of which the first lines are
"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."[41][C]
22
It would be interesting as well as instructive if some competent critic, with the analytical faculty and the poetic instinct of Matthew Arnold or Sainte-Beuve, were to study the English and French Canadian poets and show whether they are mere imitators of the best models of French and English literature, or whether their work contains within itself those germs which give promise of original fruition in the future. It will be remembered that the French critic, though a poet of merit himself, has spoken of what he calls "the radical inadequacy of French poetry." In his opinion, whatever talent the French poets have for strophe and line, their work, as a rule is "too slight, too soon read, too poor in ideas, to influence a serious mind for any length of time." No doubt many others think that, in comparison with the best conceptions of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Emerson, Browning and Tennyson, French poetry is, generally speaking, inadequate for the expression of the most sublime thoughts, of the strongest passion, or of the most powerful imagination, and though it must always please us by its easy rhythm and lucidity of style, it fails to make that vivid impression on the mind and senses which is the best test of that true poetic genius which influences generations and ever lives in the hearts of the people. It represents in some respects the lightness and vivacity of the French intellectual temperament under ordinary conditions, and not the strength of the national character, whose depths are only revealed at some crisis which evokes a deep sentiment of patriotism. "Partant pour la Syrie," so often heard in the days of the last Bonaparte regime, probably illustrated this lighter tendency of the French mind just as the "Marseillaise," the noblest and most impressive of popular poetic outbursts, illustrated national passion evoked by abnormal conditions. French Canadian poetry has been often purely imitative of French models, like Musset and Gauthier, both in style and sentiment, and consequently lacked strength and originality. It might be thought that in this new country poets would be inspired by original conceptions—that the intellectual fruition would be fresh and vigorous like some natural products that grow so luxuriantly on the virginal soil of the new Dominion, and not like those which grow on land which is renewed and enriched by artificial means after centuries23 of growth. Perhaps the literature of a colonial dependency, or a relatively new country, must necessarily in its first stages be imitative, and it is only now and then an original mind bursts the fetters of intellectual subordination. In the United States Emerson and Hawthorne probably best represent the original thought and imagination of that comparatively new country, just as Aldrich and Howells represent in the first case English culture in poetry, and in the other the sublimated essence of reportorial realism. The two former are original thinkers, the two others pure imitators. Walt Whitman's poems certainly show at times much power and originality of conception, but after all they are simply the creations of an eccentric genius and illustrate a phase of that Realism towards which fiction even in America has been tending of late, and which has been already degraded in France to a Naturalism which is positively offensive. He has not influenced to any perceptible extent the intellect of his generation or elevated the thoughts of his countrymen like the two great minds I have just named. Yet even Whitman's success, relatively small as it was in his own country, arose chiefly from the fact that he attempted to be an American poet, representing the pristine vigour and natural freedom of a new land. It is when French Canadian poets become thoroughly Canadian by the very force of the inspiration of some Canadian subject they have chosen, that we can see them at their best. Fréchette has all the finish of the French poets, and while it cannot be said that he has yet originated great thoughts which are likely to live among even the people whom he has so often instructed and delighted, yet he has given us poems like that on the discovery of the Mississippi,[D] which proves that he is capable of even better things if he would always seek inspiration from the sources of the deeply interesting history of his own country, or enter into the inner mysteries and social relations of his own people, rather than dwell on the lighter shades and incidents of their lives. Perhaps in some respects Crémazie had greater capabilities for the poems of deep passion or vivid imagination than any of his successors in literature; the few national24 poems he left behind are a promise of what he could have produced had the circumstances of his later life been happier.[E] After all, the poetry that lives is the poetry of human life and human sympathy, of joy and sorrow, rather than verses on mountains, rivers and lakes, or sweetly worded sonnets to Madame B. or Mademoiselle C. When we compare the English with the French Canadian poets we can see what an influence the more picturesque and interesting history of French Canada exercises on the imagination of its writers. The poets that claim Ontario for their home give us rhythmical and pleasing descriptions of the lake and river scenery of which the varied aspects and moods might well captivate the eye of the poet as well as of the painter. It is very much painting in both cases; the poet should be an artist by temperament equally with the painter who puts his thoughts on canvas and not in words. Descriptions of our meadows, prairies and forests, with their wealth of herbage and foliage, or artistic sketches of pretty bits of lake scenery have their limitations as respects their influence on a people. Great thoughts or deeds are not bred by scenery. The American poem that has captured the world is not any one of Bryant's delightful sketches of the varied landscape of his native land, but Longfellow's Evangeline, which is a story of the "affection that hopes, and endures and is patient." Dollard, and the Lady of Fort La Tour are themes which we do not find in prosaic Ontario, whose history is only a century old—a history of stern materialism as a rule, rarely picturesque or romantic, and hardly ever heroic except in some episodes of the war of 1812-15, in which Canadians, women as well as men, did their duty faithfully to king and country, though their deeds have never yet been adequately told in poem or prose. The story of Laura Secord's toilsome journey on a June day eighty years ago[41a] seems as susceptible of strong poetic treatment as Paul Revere's Ride, told in matchless verse by Longfellow.
I think if we compare the best Canadian poems with the same class of literature in Australia the former do not at all lose25 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,[42] 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 inspiring26 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."[43]
Or read that tribute which the French Canadian laureate, Fréchette, has been fain to pay to the English flag under whose folds his country has enjoyed so much freedom and protection for its institutions:
"Regarde me disait mon père
Ce drapeau vaillamment porté;
Il a fait ton pays prospère
Et respecte ta liberté.
"C'est le drapeau de l'Angleterre;
Sans tache, sur le firmament,
Presque à tous les points de la terre
Il flotte glorieusement."
Or take up a volume by Roberts and read that frequently quoted poem of which these are the closing lines:
"Shall not our love this rough sweet land make sure?
Her bounds preserve inviolate, though we die.
O strong hearts of the North,
Let flame your loyalty forth,
And put the craven and base to an open shame,
Till earth shall know the Child of Nations by her name."
Even Mr. Edgar has forgotten the astute lawyer and the politician in his national song, "This Canada of Ours," and has given expression to the deep sentiment that lies as I have said in the heart of every true Canadian and forces him at times to words like these:
"Strong arms shall guard our cherished homes
When darkest danger lowers,
And with our life-blood we'll defend
This Canada of ours,
Fair Canada,
Dear Canada,
This Canada of ours."
27
Such poems are worth a good many political speeches even in parliament so far as their effect upon the hearts and sympathies is concerned. We all remember a famous man once said, "Let me make all the ballads, and I care not who makes the laws of a people."
Chapter 6
 But if Canada can point to some creditable achievement of recent years in history, poetry and essay-writing—for I think if one looks from time to time at the leading magazines and reviews of the two continents he will find that Canada is fairly well represented in their pages[44]—there is one respect in which Canadians have never won any marked success, and that is in the novel or romance. "Wacousta, or the Prophecy: a Tale of the Canadas," was written sixty years ago by Major John Richardson,[45a] a native Canadian, but it was at the best a spirited imitation of Cooper, and has not retained the interest it attracted at a time when the American novelist had created a taste for exaggerated pictures of Indian life and forest scenery. Of course attempts have been made time and again by other English Canadians to describe episodes of our history, and portray some of our national and social characteristics, but with the single exception of "The Golden Dog,"[45] written a few years ago by Mr. William Kirby, of Niagara, I cannot point to one which shows much imaginative or literary skill. If we except the historical romance by Mr. Marmette, "Fran?ois de Bienville,"[46] which has had several editions, French Canada is even weak in this particular, and this is the more surprising because there is abundance of material for the novelist or writer of romance in her peculiar society and institutions, and in her historic annals and traditions. But as yet neither a Cooper, nor an Irving, nor a Hawthorne has appeared to delight Canadians in the fruitful field of fiction that their country offers to the pen of imaginative genius. It is true we have a work by De Gaspé, "Les Anciens Canadiens,"[47] which has been translated by Roberts and one or two others, but it has rather the value of historical annals than the spirit and form of true romance. It28 is the very poverty of our production in what ought to be a rich source of literary inspiration, French Canadian life and history, that has given currency to a work whose signal merit is its simplicity of style and adherence to historical fact. As Parkman many years ago first commenced to illumine the too often dull pages of Canadian history, so other American writers have also ventured in the still fresh field of literary effort that romance offers to the industrious, inventive brain. In the "Romance of Dollard," "Tonty," and the "Lady of Fort St. John," Mrs. Mary Hartwell Catherwood has recalled most interesting episodes of our past annals with admirable literary taste and a deep enthusiasm for Canadian history in its romantic and picturesque aspects.[48] When we read Conan Doyle's "Refugees"—the best historical novel that has appeared from the English Press for years—we may well regret that it is not Canadian genius which has created so fascinating a romance out of the materials that exist in the history of the ancien régime. Dr. Doyle's knowledge of Canadian life and history is obviously very superficial; but slight as it is he has used it with a masterly skill to give Canada a part in his story—to show how closely associated were the fortunes of the colony with the French Court,—with the plans and intrigues of the king and his mistresses, and of the wily ecclesiastics who made all subservient to their deep purpose. It would seem from our failure to cultivate successfully the same popular branch of letters that Canadians are wanting in the inventive and imaginative faculty, and that the spirit of materialism and practical habits, which has so long necessarily cramped literary effort in this country, still prevents happy ventures in this direction. It is a pity that no success has been won in this country,—as in Australia by Mrs. Campbell Praed, "Tasma," and many others,—in the way of depicting those characteristics of Canadian life, in the past and present, which, when touched by the imaginative and cultured intellect, will reach the sympathies and earn the plaudits of all classes of readers at home and abroad. Perhaps, Mr. Gilbert Parker,[49] now a resident of London, but a Canadian by birth, education and sympathies, will yet succeed in his laudable ambition of giving form and vitality to the abundant materials29 that exist in the Dominion, among the habitants on the old seigneuries of the French province, in that historic past of which the ruins still remain in Montreal and Quebec, in the Northwest with its quarrels of adventurers in the fur trade, and in the many other sources of inspiration that exist in this country for the true story-teller who can invent a plot and give his creations a touch of reality, and not that doll-like, saw-dust appearance that the vapid characters of some Canadian stories assume from the very poverty of the imagination that has originated them.
That imagination and humour have some existence in the Canadian mind—though one sees little of those qualities in the press or in public speeches, or in parliamentary debates—we can well believe when we read "The Dodge Club Abroad," by Professor De Mille,[50] who was cut off in the prime of his intellectual strength, or "A Social Departure," by Sara Jeannette Duncan,[51] who, as a sequence of a trip around the world, has given us not a dry book of travels but a story with touches of genial humour and bright descriptions of life and nature, and who is now following up that excellent literary effort by promising sketches of East Indian life. A story which attracted some attention not long since for originality of conception and ran through several editions, "Beggars All," is written by a Miss L. Dougall, who is said to be a member of a Montreal family, and though this book does not deal with incidents of Canadian life it illustrates that fertility of invention which is latent among our people and only requires a favourable opportunity to develop itself. The best literature of this kind is like that of France, which has the most intimate correspondence with the social life and development of the people of the country. "The excellence of a romance," writes Chevalier Bunsen in his critical preface to Gustav Freytag's "Debit and Credit," "like that of an epic or a drama, lies in the apprehension and truthful exhibition of the course of human things.... The most vehement longing of our times is manifestly after a faithful mirror of the present." With us, all efforts in this direction have been most common place—hardly above the average of "Social Notes" in the columns of Ottawa newspapers.
30
I do not for one depreciate the influence of good fiction on the minds of a reading community like ours; it is inevitable that a busy people, and especially women distracted with household cares, should always find that relief in this branch of literature which no other reading can give them; and if the novel has then become a necessity of the times in which we live, at all events I hope Canadians, who may soon venture into the field, will study the better models, endeavour to infuse some originality into their creations and plots, and not bring the Canadian fiction of the future to that low level to which the school of realism in France, and in a minor degree in England and the United States, would degrade the novel and story of every-day life. To my mind it goes without saying that a history written with that fidelity to original authorities, that picturesqueness of narration, that philosophic insight into the motives and plans of statesmen, that study and comprehension of the character and life of a people, which should constitute the features of a great work of this class,—that such a history has assuredly a much deeper and more useful purpose in the culture and education of the world than any work of fiction can possibly have even when animated by a lofty genius. Still as the novel and romance will be written as long as a large proportion of the world amid the cares and activities of life seeks amusement rather than knowledge, it is for the Canadian Scott, or Hawthorne, or "George Eliot," or Dickens of the future, to have a higher and purer aim than the majority of novel writers of the present day, who, with a few notable exceptions like Black, Besant, Barrie, Stephenson or Oliphant, weary us by their dulness and lack of the imaginative and inventive faculty, and represent rather the demands of the publishers to meet the requirements of a public which must have its new novel as regularly as the Scotchman must have his porridge, the Englishman his egg and toast, and the American his ice-water.
If it were possible within the compass of this address to give a list of the many histories, poems, essays and pamphlets that have appeared from the Canadian press during the first quarter of a century since the Dominion of Canada has been in existence,31 the number would astonish many persons who have not followed our literary activity. Of course the greater part of this work is ephemeral in its character and has no special value; much of the historical work is a dreary collection of facts and dates which shows the enterprise of school publishers and school teachers and is generally wanting in that picturesqueness and breadth of view which give interest to history and leave a vivid impression on the mind of the student. Most of these pamphlets have been written on religious, political or legal questions of the day. Many of the poems illustrate rather the aspirations of the school boy or maiden whose effusions generally appeared in the poet's corner of the village newspaper. Still there are even among these mere literary "transients" evidences of power of incisive argument and of some literary style. In fact, all the scientific, historical and poetical contributions of the period in question, make up quite a library of Canadian literature. And here let me observe in passing, some persons still suppose that belles-lettres, works of fiction, poetry and criticism, alone constitute literature. The word can take in its complete sense a very wide range, for it embraces the pamphlet or monograph on the most abstruse scientific, or mathematical or geographical or physical subject, as well as the political essay, the brilliant history, or the purely imaginative poem or novel. It is not so much the subject as the form and style which make them worthy of a place in literature. One of the most remarkable books ever written, the "Esprit des Lois" by Montesquieu, has won the highest place in literature by its admirable style, and in the science of politics by the importance of its matter. The works of Lyell, Huxley, Hunt, Dawson, Tyndall, and Darwin owe their great value not entirely to the scientific ideas and principles and problems there discussed, but also to the lucidity of style in which the whole subject is presented to the reader, whether versed or not in science. "Literature is a large word," says Matthew Arnold,[52] discussing with Tyndall this very subject; "it may mean everything written with letters or printed in a book. Euclid's Elements and Newton's Principia are thus literature. All knowledge that reaches us through books is literature. But as I do not mean, by knowing ancient32 Rome, knowing merely more or less of Latin belles-lettres, and taking no account of Rome's military, and political, and legal, and administrative work in the world; and as, by knowing ancient Greece, I understand knowing her as the giver of Greek art, and the guide to a free and right use of reason and to scientific methods, and the founder of our mathematics, and physics, and astronomy, and biology, I understand knowing her as all this, and not merely knowing certain Greek poems, and histories, and treatises and speeches, so as to the knowledge of modern nations also. By knowing modern nations, I mean not merely knowing their belles-lettres, but knowing also what has been done by such men as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin." I submit this definition of literature by a great English critic and poet who certainly knew what he was writing about, to the studious consideration of Principal Grant who, in an address to the Royal Society two years ago,[53] appeared to have some doubt that much of its work could be called literature; a doubt that he forgot for the moment actually consigned to a questionable level also his many devious utterances and addresses on political, religious and other questions of the day, and left him entirely out of the ranks of littérateurs and in a sort of limbo which is a world of neither divinity, nor politics, nor letters. Taking this definition of the bright apostle of English culture, I think Canadians can fairly claim to have some position as a literary people even if it be a relatively humble one, on account of the work done in history, belles-lettres, political science and the sciences generally Science alone has had in Canada for nearly half a century many votaries who have won for themselves high distinction, as the eminent names on the list of membership of the Royal Society since its foundation can conclusively show. The literature of science, as studied and written by Canadians, is remarkably comprehensive, and finds a place in every well furnished library of the world.
The doyen of science in Canada, Sir William Dawson,[54] we are all glad to know, is still at work after a long and severe illness, which was, no doubt, largely due to the arduous devotion of years to education and science. It is not my intention to33 refer here to other well-known names in scientific literature, but I may pause for an instant to mention the fact that one of the earliest scientific writers of eminence, who was a Canadian by birth and education, was Mr. Elkanah Billings,[55] pal?ontologist and geologist, who contributed his first papers to the Citizen of Ottawa, then Bytown, afterwards to have greatness thrown upon it and made the political capital of Canada.
Chapter 7
 Here I come naturally to answer the questions that may be put by some that have not followed the history and the work of the Royal Society of Canada,—What measure of success has it won? has it been of value to the Canadian people in whose interests it was established, and with whose money it is mainly supported? Twelve years have nearly passed away since a few gentlemen, engaged in literary, scientific and educational pursuits, assembled at McGill College on the invitation of the Marquess of Lorne, then governor-general of Canada, to consider the practicability of establishing a society which would bring together both the French and English Canadian elements of our population for purposes of common study and the discussion of such subjects as might be profitable to the Dominion, and at the same time develop the literature of learning and science as far as practicable.[56] This society was to have a Dominion character—to form a union of leading representatives of all those engaged in literature and science in the several provinces, with the principle of federation observed in so far as it asked every society of note in every section to send delegates to make reports on the work of the year within its particular sphere. Of the gentlemen who assembled at this interesting meeting beneath the roof of the learned principal of Montreal's well-known university, the majority still continue active friends of the society they aided Lord Lome to found; but I must also add with deep regret that, within a little more than a year, two of the most distinguished promoters of the society, Dr. Thomas Sterry Hunt and Sir Daniel Wilson, have been called from their active and successful labours34 in education, science and letters. As I know perhaps better than any one else, on account of an official connection with the society from the very hour it was suggested by Lord Lorne, no two members ever comprehended more thoroughly the useful purpose which it could serve amid the all-surrounding materialism of this country, or laboured more conscientiously until the very hour of their death by their writings and their influence to make the society a Canadian institution, broad in its scope, liberal in its culture, and elevated in its aspirations. Without dwelling on the qualifications of two men[57] whose names are imperishably connected with the work of their lifetime—arch?ology, education and chemistry—I may go on to say that the result of the Montreal meeting was the establishment of a society which met for the first time at Ottawa in the May of 1882, with a membership of eighty Fellows under the presidency of Dr. (afterwards Sir) William Dawson, and the vice-presidency of the Honourable P. J. O. Chauveau, a distinguished French Canadian who had won a high name, not only in literature, but also in the political world where he was for years a conspicuous figure; noted for his eloquence, his culture and his courtesy of manner. The society was established in no spirit of isolation from other literary and scientific men because its membership was confined at the outset to eighty Fellows who had written "memoirs of merit or rendered eminent services to literature or science"—a number subsequently increased to a hundred under certain limitations. On the contrary it asks for, and has constantly published, contributions from all workers in the same fields of effort with the simple proviso that such contributions are presented with the endorsation of an actual member, though they may be read before any one of the four sections by the author himself. Every association, whether purely literature or historical, or scientific, as I have already intimated, has been asked to assist in the work of the society,[58] and its delegates given every advantage at the meetings possessed by the Fellows themselves, except voting and discussing the purely internal affairs of the Royal Society. Some misapprehension appears to have existed at first in the public mind that, because the society was named "The Royal Society of Canada,"35 an exclusive and even aristocratic institution was in contemplation. It seems a little perplexing to understand why an objection could be taken to such a designation when the Queen is at the head of our system of government, and her name appears in the very first clauses of the act of union, and in every act requiring the exercise of the royal prerogative in this loyal dependency of the crown. As a fact, in using the title, the desire was to follow the example of similar societies in Australia, and recall that famous Royal Society in England, whose fellowship is a title of nobility in the world of science. Certain features were copied from the Institute of France, inasmuch as there is a division into sections with the idea of bringing together into each for the purposes of common study and discussion those men who have devoted themselves to special branches of the literature of learning and science. In this country and, indeed, in America generally, a notable tendency is what may be called the levelling principle—to deprecate the idea that any man should be in any way better than another; and in order to prevent that result it is necessary to assail him as soon as he shows any political or intellectual merit, and to stop him, if possible, from attaining that mental superiority above his fellows that his industry and his ability may enable him to reach. The Royal Society suffered a little at first from this spirit of depreciation which is often carried to an extent that one at times could almost believe that this is a country without political virtues or intellectual development of any kind. The claims of some of its members were disputed by literary aspirants who did not happen for a moment to be enrolled in its ranks, and the society was charged with exclusiveness when, as a fact, it simply limited its membership, and demanded certain qualifications, with the desire to make that membership a test of some intellectual effort, and consequently more prized by those who were allowed sooner or later to enter. It would have been quite possible for the society to make itself a sort of literary or scientific picnic by allowing every man or woman who had, or believed they had, some elementary scientific or other knowledge to enter its ranks, and have the consequent advantages of cheap railway fares and other subsidiary36 advantages on certain occasions, but its promoters did not think that would best subserve the special objects they had in view. At all events, none of them could have been prompted by any desire to create a sort of literary aristocracy. Indeed, one would like to know how any one in his senses could believe for a moment that any institution of learning could be founded with exclusive tendencies in these times, in this or any other country! If there is an intelligent democracy anywhere it is the Republic of Letters. It may be aristocratic in the sense that there are certain men and women who have won fame and stand on a pedestal above their fellows, but it is the world, not of a class, but of all ranks and conditions, that has agreed to place them on that pedestal as a tribute to their genius which has made people happier, wiser and better, has delighted and instructed the artisan as well as the noble.
For twelve years then the Royal Society has continued to persevere in its work; and thanks to the encouragement given it by the government of Canada it has been able, year by year, to publish a large and handsome volume of the proceedings and transactions of its meetings. No other country in the world can exhibit volumes more creditable on the whole in point of workmanship than those of this society. The papers and monographs that have appeared embrace a wide field of literature—the whole range of arch?ological, ethnological, historical, geographical, biological, mathematical and physical studies. The volumes now are largely distributed throughout Canada—among the educated and thinking classes—and are sent to every library, society, university and learned institution of note in the world, with the hope of making the Dominion better known. The countries where they are placed for purposes of reference are these:
The United States: every State of the union and District of Columbia,
Newfoundland,
Mexico,
Brazil,
Costa Rica,
Uruguay,
Guatemala,
Venezuela,
Chile,
Peru,
India,
Japan,
Australia,
New Zealand,
Great Britain and Ireland,
37Ecuador,
Italy,
Greece,
Norway and Sweden,
Spain,
South Africa,
Germany,
Roumania,
Argentine Republic,
France,
Russia,
Austria-Hungary,
Mauritius,
Denmark.
So well known are these 'Transactions' now in every country that, when it happens some library or institution has not received it from the beginning or has been forgotten in the distribution, the officers of the society have very soon received an intimation of the fact. This is gratifying, since it shows that the world of higher literature and of special research—the world of scholars and scientists engaged in important observation and investigation—is interested in the work that is being done in the same branches in this relatively new country. It would be impossible for me within the limits of this address to give you anything like an accurate and comprehensive idea of the numerous papers the subject and treatment of which, even from a largely practical and utilitarian point of view, have been of decided value to Canada, and I can only say here that the members of the society have endeavoured to bring to the consideration of the subjects they have discussed a spirit of conscientious study and research, and that, too, without any fee or reward except that stimulating pleasure which work of an intellectual character always brings to the mind.
In these days of critical comparative science, when the study of the aboriginal or native languages of this continent has absorbed the attention of close students, the Royal Society has endeavoured to give encouragement and currency to those studies by publishing grammars, vocabularies and other monographs relating to Indian tongues and antiquities. The Abbé Cuoq, one of the most erudite scholars of this continent in this special branch of knowledge, has nearly completed in the 'Transactions' what will be a monumental work of learning on the Algonquin language. A Haida grammar and dictionary are also now awaiting the completion of the Abbé Cuoq's work to be published in the same way. A great deal of light has been thrown on Cartier's38 and Champlain's voyages in the gulf, and consequently on its cartography, by the labours of the Abbé Verreau, Prof. Ganong and others. The excellent work of the Geological Survey has been supplemented by important contributions from its staff, and consequently there is to be found in the 'Transactions' a large amount of information, both abstract and practical, on the economic and other minerals of the Dominion. Chiefly owing to the efforts of the society, the government of Canada some time ago commenced to take tidal observations on the Atlantic coasts of Canada—an enterprise of great value to the shipping and commercial interests of the country—and has also co-operated in the determination of the true longitude of Montreal which is now being prosecuted under the able superintendence of Professor McLeod. It is in the same practical spirit of investigation and action that the society has published a treatise by that veteran scholar, Dr. Moses Harvey, of St. John's, Newfoundland, on "The Artificial Propagation of Marine Food-fishes and Edible Crustaceans"; and it is satisfactory to understand from a statement made in the House of Commons last session that a question of such deep interest to our great fishing industry in the maritime provinces is likely to result in some practical measure in the direction suggested. The contributions of Sir Daniel Wilson on the "Artistic Faculty in the Aboriginal Races," "The Pre-Aryan American Man," "The Trade and Commerce of the Stone Age," and "The Huron-Iroquois Race in Canada," that typical race of American Indians, were all intended to supplement in a measure that scholarly work, "Prehistoric Man," which had brought him fame many years before. Dr. Patterson of Nova Scotia, a most careful student of the past, has made valuable contributions to the history of Portuguese exploration in North American waters, and of that remarkable lost tribe known as Beothiks or Red Indians of Newfoundland. Sir William Dawson has contributed to almost every volume of the 'Transactions' from his stores of geological learning, while his distinguished son has followed closely in his footsteps, and has made valuable additions to our knowledge, not only of the geology of the Northwest, but also of the antiquities, languages and customs of the Indian tribes of39 British Columbia and the adjacent islands. The opinions and theories of Dr. Thomas Sterry Hunt on the "Taconic Question in Geology" and the "Relations of the Taconic Series to the later Crystalline and the Cambrian Rocks," were given at length in the earlier volumes. Mr. G. F. Matthew, of St. John, New Brunswick, who is a very industrious student, has elaborated a work on the "Fauna of the St. John Group." Not only have our geological conditions been more fully explained, but our flora, ferns, and botany generally have been clearly set forth by Professors Lawson, Macoun and Penhallow. All these and many other papers of value have been illustrated by expensive plates, generally executed by Canadian artists. The majority of the names I have just given happen to be English Canadian, but the French language has been represented in science by such eminent men as Hamel, Laflamme and Deville—the two first illustrating the learning and culture of Laval, so long associated with the best scholarship of the province of Quebec. Without pursuing the subject further, let me say, as one who has always endeavoured to keep the interests of the society in view, that such monographs as I have mentioned represent the practical value of its work, and show what an important sphere of usefulness is invariably open to it. The object is not to publish ephemeral newspaper or magazine articles—that is to say, articles intended for merely popular information or purely literary practice—but always those essays and works of moderate compass which illustrate original research, experiment and investigation in all branches of historical, arch?ological, ethnological and scientific studies, and which will form a permanent and instructive reference library for scholars and students in the same branches of thought and study all over the world. In fact, the essays must necessarily be such as cannot be well published except through the assistance granted by a government, as in our case, or by the liberality of private individuals. The society, in fact, is in its way attempting just such work as is done by the Smithsonian Institute, on a large scale, at Washington, so far as the publication of important transactions is concerned. I admit that sometimes essays have appeared, but many more are offered from time to time, better suited to the periodicals40 of the day than to the pages of a work of which the object is to perpetuate the labours of students and scholars, and not the efforts of the mere literary amateur or trifler in belles-lettres. But while there must be necessarily such limitations to the scope of the 'Transactions,' which are largely scientific in their treatment, room will be always made for papers on any economic, social or ethical subject which, by their acute reasoning, sound philosophy and originality of thought, demand the attention of students everywhere. Such literary criticism as finds place now and then in the dignified old 'Quarterly Review' or in the 'Contemporary' will be printed whenever it is written by any Canadian author with the same power of keen analysis and judicious appreciation of the thoughts and motives of an author that we find notably in that charming study of Tennyson's "Princess," by S. E. Dawson,[59] who is a Canadian by birth, education and feeling. No doubt there is room in the Dominion for a magazine combining the features of 'Blackwood,' the 'Contemporary' and the 'Quarterly Review'; that is to say, poetry, fiction, criticism, reviews of topics of the day, and, in fact, original literary effort of the higher order, which, though mostly ephemeral in its character, must have much influence for the time being on the culture and the education of the public mind. Since the days of the old 'Canadian Monthly,'[60] which, with all its imperfections, contained much excellent work, all efforts in the same direction have been deserving of little encouragement; and, in fact, if such a venture is to succeed hereafter it must have behind it sufficient capital to engage the assistance of the best Canadian writers, who now send their work to American and English periodicals. Such a magazine must be carefully edited, and not made the dumping-ground for the crude efforts of literary dabblers or for romantic gush and twaddle, but must be such a judicious selection of the best Canadian talent as will evoke comparison with the higher class of periodicals I have mentioned. We have only one literary paper of merit in this country, and that is 'The Week,' which, despite all the indifference that is too apt to meet a journal not influenced by party motives, has kept its literary aim always before it, and endeavoured to do such a work as 'The New York41 Nation' has been doing for years under far greater advantages in the neighbouring country with marked success and ability. In the meantime, until a magazine of the character I advocate is established, the 'Transactions of the Royal Society' cannot be expected to occupy the same ground unless it is prepared to give up that important field which it and the societies with which it is associated alone can fill in this country. In one respect, indeed, the Royal Society, in my opinion—and I have endeavoured to impress it on my fellow-members—can reach a much larger class of readers than it is now possible by means of its somewhat formidable though handsomely printed and well illustrated volumes, which necessarily are confined, for the most part, to libraries and institutions, where they can be best consulted by students who find it necessary to inform themselves on such Canadian subjects as the society necessarily treats. It is quite possible that by selecting a more convenient form, say royal octavo, and publishing the purely scientific sections in one volume and the purely literary department in another, a larger inducement will be given to the public to purchase its 'Transactions' at a moderate cost and in a more convenient shape for reading, whenever they contain monographs or large works in which Canadians generally are interested or on which they wish special information. Of course, in making this change care must be taken to maintain the typographical appearance and the character of the scientific illustrations and the usefulness of the cartography. Not only may the Royal Society in this way reach a larger reading public, but it may stimulate the efforts of historic and other writers by giving them greater facilities for obtaining special editions of their works for general sale. As it is now, each author obtains a hundred copies of his paper in pamphlets, sometimes more; and if the form is now made smaller and more handy, to use a common word, he will be induced to order a larger edition at his own cost. Even as it is now, some four or five thousand copies of essays and monographs—in special cases many more—are annually distributed by authors in addition to those circulated in the bound volumes of the 'Transactions'; and in this way any value these works may have is considerably enhanced. If it should be decided42 to continue the large form, at all events it will be in the interest of the society, and of the author of any monograph or history of more than ordinary value, to print it not only in the 'Transactions' but also in a smaller volume for general circulation. Practically this would meet the object in view—the larger distribution of the best work of the section devoted to historical and general literature. But whether this change is adopted or not,[61] I think the Royal Society, by showing even still greater zeal and earnestness in the work for which it was founded, by co-operating with scholars and students throughout the Dominion, by showing every possible sympathy with all those engaged in the work of art, culture and education, can look forward hopefully to the future; and all it asks from the Canadian public at large is confidence in its work and objects, which are in no sense selfish or exclusive, but are influenced by a sincere desire to do what it can to promote historic truth and scientific research, and give a stimulus in this way to the intellectual development of this young Dominion, yet in the infancy of its literary life.
Chapter 8
 This necessarily brief review of the work of the Royal Society could not well be left out of an address like this; and I can now pass on to some reflections that occur to me on the general subject.
In the literature of biography, so susceptible of a treatment full of human interests and sympathies—as chatty Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and Lockhart's "Life of Scott," notably illustrate—we have little to show, except it be the enterprise of publishers and the zeal of too enthusiastic friends. Nor is it necessary to dwell on the literature of the law, which is becoming in a measure43 more of a technical and less of a learned profession in the larger sense, unless, indeed, our university schools of political science eventually elevate it to a wider range of thought. Several excellent books of a purely technical character have been compiled from year to year, but no Kent, or Story, or Cooley has yet appeared to instruct us by a luminous exposition of principle, or breadth of knowledge. Those who know anything of Dr. Edward Blake's great intellectual power, of his wealth of legal learning, of his insight into the operations of political constitutions, cannot deny that he at least could produce a work which might equal in many respects those of the great Americans here named; but it looks very much at present as if he, and others I could mention, will give up their best years to the absorbing and uncertain struggles of politics, rather than to the literature of that profession to which they might, under different conditions, raise imperishable memorials. From the pulpit many of us hear from time to time eloquent and well reasoned efforts which tell us how much even the class, necessarily most conservative in its traditions, and confined in its teachings, has been forced by modern tendencies to enlarge its human sympathies and widen its intellectual horizon; but the published sermons are relatively few in number; and while, now and then, at intervals, after a public celebration, an important anniversary or ceremonial, or as a sequence of a controversy on the merits or demerits of creed or dogma, we see a pile of pamphlets on the counter of a bookstore, we do not hear of any printed book of sermons that appears to have entered of recent years into the domain of human thought and discussion in the great world beyond our territorial limits.
I shall not attempt to dwell at any length on the intellectual standard of our legislative bodies, but shall confine myself to a few general observations that naturally suggest themselves to an observer of our political conditions. Now, as in all times of our history, political life claims many strong, keen and cultured intellects, although it is doubtful whether the tendency of our democratic institutions is to encourage the most highly educated organizations to venture, or remain, should once they venture, in the agitated and unsafe sea of political passion and controversy.44 The first parliament of the Dominion, and the first legislatures of the provinces, which met after the federal union of 1867, when the system of dual representation was permissible—a system whose advantages are more obvious now—brought into public life the most brilliant and astute intellects of Canada, and it will probably be a long time before we shall again see assemblages so distinguished for oratory, humour and intellectual power. A federal system was, doubtless, the only one feasible under the racial and natural conditions that met the Quebec Conference of 1864; but, while admitting its political necessity, we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact that the great drain its numerous legislative bodies and governments make upon the mental resources of a limited population—a drain increased by the abolition of dual representation—is calculated to weaken our intellectual strength in our legislative halls, when a legislative union would in the nature of things concentrate that strength in one powerful current of activity and thought. A population of five millions of people has to provide not only between six and seven hundred representatives, who must devote a large amount of time to the public service for inadequate compensation, but also lieutenant-governors, judges and high officials, holding positions requiring intellectual qualifications as well as business capacity if they are properly filled. Apart from these considerations, it must be remembered that the opportunities of acquiring wealth and success in business or professional vocations have naturally increased with the material development of the Dominion, and that men of brains have consequently even less inducement than formerly to enter on the uncertain and too often ungrateful pursuit of politics. We have also the danger before us that it will be with us, as it is in the United States and even in England under the new conditions that are rapidly developing there; the professional politician, who is too often the creation of factions and cliques, and the lower influences of political intrigue and party management, will be found, as time passes, more common in our legislative halls, to the detriment of those higher ideals that should be the animating principles of public life in this young country, whose future happiness and45 greatness depend so much on the present methods of party government. Be all this as it may be, one may still fairly claim for our legislative bodies that their intellectual standard can compare favourably with that of the Congress at Washington or the state legislatures of Massachusetts and New England generally. After all, it is not for brilliant intellectual pyrotechnics we should now so much look to the legislative bodies of Canada, but rather for honesty of purpose, keen comprehension of the public interests, and a business capacity which can grasp the actual material wants and necessities of a country which has to face the competition, and even opposition, of a great people full of industrial as well as intellectual energy.
Nowhere in this review have I claimed for this country any very striking results in the course of the half century since which we have shown so much political and material activity. I cannot boast that we have produced a great poem or a great history which has attracted the attention of the world beyond us, and assuredly we find no noteworthy attempt in the direction of a novel of our modern life; but what I do claim is, looking at the results generally, the work we have done has been sometimes above the average in those fields of literature—and here I include, necessarily, science—in which Canadians have worked. They have shown in many productions a conscientious spirit of research, patient industry, and not a little literary skill in the management of their material. I think, on the whole, there have been enough good poems, histories and essays written and published in Canada for the last four or five decades to prove that there has been a steady intellectual growth on the part of our people, and that it has kept pace at all events with the mental growth in the pulpit, or in the legislative halls, where, of late years, a keen practical debating style has taken the place of the more rhetorical and studied oratory of old times. I believe the intellectual faculties of Canadians only require larger opportunities for their exercise to bring forth a rich fruition. I believe the progress in the years to come will be far greater than that we have yet shown, and that necessarily so, with the wider distribution of wealth, the dissemination of a higher culture, and a46 greater confidence in our own mental strength, and in the resources that this country offers to pen and pencil. The time will come when that great river, associated with memories of Cartier, Champlain, La Salle, Frontenac, Wolfe and Montcalm,—that river already immortalized in history by the pen of Parkman—will be as noted in song and story as the Rhine, and will have its Irving to make it as famous as the lovely Hudson.
Of course there are many obstacles in the way of successful literary pursuits in Canada. Our population is still small, and separated into two distinct nationalities, who for the most part necessarily read books printed in their own tongue. A book published in Canada then has a relatively limited clientèle in the country itself, and cannot meet much encouragement from publishers in England or in the United States who have advantages for placing their own publications which no Canadian can have under existing conditions. Consequently an author of ambition and merit should perforce look for publishers outside his own country if he is to expect anything like just appreciation, or to have a fair chance of reaching that literary world which alone gives fame in the true sense. It must be admitted too that so much inferior work has at times found its way from Canada to other countries that publishers are apt to look askance at a book when it is offered to them from the colonies. Still, while this may at times operate against making what is a fairly good bargain with the publisher—and many authors, of course, believe with reason that a publisher, as a rule, never makes a good bargain with an author, and certainly not with a new one—a good book will sooner or later assert itself whenever Canadians write such a book. Let Canadians then persevere conscientiously and confidently in their efforts to break through the indifference which at present tends to cramp their efforts and dampen their energy. It is a fashion with some colonial writers to believe that there is a settled determination on the part of English critics to ignore their best work, when, perhaps, in the majority of cases it is the lack of good work that is at fault. Such a conclusion sometimes finds an argument in the fact that, when so able a Canadian as Edward Blake enters the legislative halls of England, some ill-natured47 critic, who represents a spirit of insular English snobbery, has only a sneer for "this Canadian lawyer" who had better "stay at home," and not presume to think that he, a mere colonist, could have anything to say in matters affecting the good government of the British Empire. But the time has long since passed for sneers at colonial self-government or colonial intellect, and we are more likely hereafter to have a Canadian House of Commons held up as a model of decorum for so-called English gentlemen. Such able and impartial critical journals as The Athen?um are more ready to welcome than ignore a good book in these days of second-rate literature in England itself. If we produce such a good book as Mrs. Campbell Praed's "Australian Life," or Tasma's "Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill," we may be sure the English papers will do us justice. Let me frankly insist that we have far too much hasty and slovenly literary work done in Canada. The literary canon which every ambitious writer should have ever in his mind has been stated by no less an authority than Sainte-Beuve: "Devoted to my profession as a critic, I have tried to be more and more a good and if possible an able workman." A good style means artistic workmanship. It is too soon for us in this country to look for a Matthew Arnold or a Sainte-Beuve—such great critics are generally the results, and not the forerunners, of a great literature; but at least if we could have in the present state of our intellectual development, a criticism in the press which would be truthful and just, the essential characteristics of the two authors I have named, the effect would be probably in the direction of encouraging promising writers, and weeding out some literary dabblers. "What I have wished," said the French critic, "is to say not a word more than I thought, to stop even a little short of what I believed in certain cases, in order that my words might acquire more weight as historical testimony." Truth tempered by consideration for literary genius is the essence of sound criticism.
We all know that the literary temperament is naturally sensitive to anything like indifference and is too apt, perhaps, to exaggerate the importance of its calling in the prosaic world in which it is exercised. The pecuniary rewards are so few, relatively,48 in this country, that the man of imaginative mind—the purely literary worker—naturally thinks that he can, at least, ask for generous appreciation. No doubt he thinks, to quote a passage from a clever Australian novel—"The Australian Girl"—"Genius has never been truly acclimatized by the world. The Philistines always long to put out the eyes of poets and make them grind corn in Gaza." But it is well always to remember that a great deal of rough work has to be done in a country like Canada before its Augustan age can come. No doubt literary stimulus must be more or less wanting in a colony where there is latent at times in some quarters a want of self-confidence in ourselves and in our institutions, arising from that sense of dependency and habit of imitation and borrowing from others that is a necessity of a colonial condition. The tendency of the absence of sufficient self-assertion is to cramp intellectual exertion, and make us believe that success in literature can only be achieved in the old countries of Europe. That spirit of all-surrounding materialism to which Lowell has referred must also always exercise a certain sinister influence in this way—an influence largely exerted in Ontario—but despite all this we see that even among our neighbours it has not prevented the growth of a literary class famous for its intellectual successes in varied fields of literature. It is for Canadian writers to have always before them a high ideal, and remember that literature does best its duty—to quote the eloquent words of Ruskin—"in raising our fancy to the height of what may be noble, honest and felicitous in actual life; in giving us, though we may be ourselves poor and unknown, the companionship of the wisest spirits of every age and country, and in aiding the communication of clear thoughts and faithful purposes among distant nations, which will at last breathe calm upon the sea of lawless passion and change into such halcyon days the winter of the world, that the birds of the air may have their nests in peace and the Son of Man where to lay his head."
 
Chapter 9
 Largely, if not entirely, owing to the expansion of our common school system—admirable in Ontario and Nova Scotia, but defective in Quebec—and the influence of our universities and colleges, the average intelligence of the people of this country is much higher than it was a very few years ago; but no doubt it is with us as with our neighbours—to quote the words of an eminent public speaker whose brilliancy sometimes leads one to forget his higher criticism—I refer to Dr. Chauncey Depew—"Speed is the virtue and vice of our generation. We demand that morning-glories and century plants shall submit to the same conditions and flower with equal frequency." Even some of our universities from which we naturally expect so much seem disposed from time to time to lower their standard and yield too readily to the demand for purely practical education when, after all, the great reason of all education is to draw forth the best qualities of the young man, elevate his intelligence, and stimulate his highest intellectual forces. The animating principle with the majority of people is to make a young man a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or teach him some other vocation as soon as possible, and the tendency is to consider any education that does not immediately effect that result as superfluous. Whilst every institution of learning must necessarily yield something to this pervading spirit of immediate utility, it would be a mistake to sacrifice all the methods and traditions of the past when sound scholars at least were made, and the world had so many men famous in learning, in poetry, in romance, and in history. For one I range myself among those who, like James Russell Lowell and Matthew Arnold, still consider the conscientious and intelligent study of the ancient classics—the humanities as they are called—as best adapted to create cultured men and women, and as the noblest basis on which to build up even a practical education with which to earn bread and capture the world. Goldwin Smith very truly says, "A romantic age stands in need of science, a scientific and utilitarian age stands in need of the humanities."[62] The study of Greek, above all others of the humanities, is calculated to stimulate50 the higher qualities of our nature. As Matthew Arnold adds in the same discourse from which I have quoted, "The instinct for beauty is set in human nature, as surely as the instinct for knowledge is set there, or the instinct for conduct. If the instinct for beauty is served by Greek literature and art as it is served by no other literature or art, we may trust to the instinct of self-preservation in humanity for keeping Greek as part of our culture." With the same great critic and thinker, I hope that in Canada "Greek will be increasingly studied as men feel the need in them for beauty, and how powerfully Greek art and Greek literature can serve this need." We are as respects the higher education of this country in that very period which Arnold saw ahead for America—"a period of unsettlement and confusion and false tendency"—a tendency to crowd into education too many matters; and it is for this reason I venture to hope that letters will not be allowed to yield entirely to the necessity for practical science, the importance of which I fully admit, while deprecating it being made the dominant principle in our universities. If we are to come down to the lower grades of our educational system I might also doubt whether despite all its decided advantages for the masses—its admirable machinery and apparatus, its comfortable school-houses, its varied systematic studies from form to form and year to year, its well managed normal and model schools, its excellent teachers—there are not also signs of superficiality. The tendency of the age is to become rich fast, to get as much knowledge as possible within a short time, and the consequence of this is to spread far too much knowledge over a limited ground—to give a child too many subjects, and to teach him a little of everything. These are days of many cyclop?dias, historical summaries, scientific digests, reviews of reviews, French in a few lessons, and interest tables. All is digested and made easy to the student. Consequently not a little of the production of our schools and of some of our colleges may be compared to a veneer of knowledge, which easily wears off in the activities of life, and leaves the roughness of the original and cheaper material very perceptible. One may well believe that the largely mechanical system and materialistic tendency of our education has some effect in51 checking the development of a really original and imaginative literature among us. Much of our daily literature—indeed the chief literary aliment of large classes of our busy population is the newspaper press, which illustrates in many ways the haste and pressure of this life of ours in a country of practical needs like Canada. When we consider the despatch with which a large newspaper has to be made up, how reports are caught on the wing and published without sufficient verification, how editorials have to be written currente calamo, and often after midnight when important despatches come in, we may well wonder that the daily issue of a newspaper is so well done. With the development of confederation the leading Canadian papers have taken, through the influence of the new condition of things, a larger range of thought and expression, and the gross personalities which so frequently discredited the press before 1867 have now become the exception. If I might refer to an old and enterprising paper as an example of the new order of things, I should point to the Toronto Globe under its present editorial management and compare it with two or three decades ago. It will be seen there is a deeper deference to an intelligent public opinion by an acknowledgment of the right of a community to hear argument and reason even on matters of party politics, and to have fair reports of speeches on both sides of a question. In point of appearance, make-up, and varied literary matter—especially in its literary department, its criticisms of new books in all branches of literature—the Australasian press is decidedly superior to that of Canada as a rule. The Melbourne Argus and the Sydney Herald compare with the best London journals, and the reason is mainly because there is no country press in Australia to limit the enterprise and energy of a newspaper publisher. Perhaps it is as well for the general instruction of a community like ours that there should be a large and active country press, and the people not too much under the guidance of a few great journals in important centres of political thought and action. For one I have more faith in the good sense and reason of the community as a whole than in the motives and disinterestedness of a few leaders in one or more cities or towns. But I must also add that when we consider52 the influence a widely disseminated press like that of Canada must exercise on the opinions and sentiments of the large body of persons of whom it is the principal or only literature, one must wish that there was more independence of thought and honesty of criticism as well as a greater willingness, or capacity rather, to study a high ideal on the part of the press generally. However improved the tone of the Canadian press may have become of late years, however useful it may be as a daily record of passing events—of course, outside of party politics—however ably it may discuss in its editorial columns the topics of the day, it is not yet an influence always calculated to strengthen the mind and bring out the best intellectual faculties of a reader like a book which is the result of calm reflection, sound philosophic thought, originality of idea, or the elevated sentiment of the great poet or the historian. As a matter of fact a newspaper is too often in Canada a reflex of the average rather than of the higher intelligence of the country, and on no other ground can we explain the space devoted to a football match, or a prize fight, or a murder trial, or degrading incidents in the criminal life of men and women. For one, I am an admirer of athletic and other sports calculated to develop health and muscle, as long as they are not pursued to extremes, do not become the end and aim of youth, or allowed to degenerate into brutality. All of us do not forget the great influence of the Olympian, the Pythian and other public games on the Greek character when the land was "living Greece" indeed; but we must also remember that art and song had a part in those contests of athletes, that they even inspired the lyric odes of Pindar, that the poet there recited his drama or epic, the painter exhibited his picture, and the intellectual was made a part of the physical struggle in those palmy days of Greek culture. I have not yet heard that any Canadian poet or painter or historian has ever been so honoured, or asked to take part in those athletic games and sports to which our public journals devote a number of pages which have not yet been set apart for Canadian or any literature. The newspaper reporter is nowadays the only representative of literature in our Pythia or Olympia, and he assuredly cannot be said to be a Pindaric singer when he53 exalts the triumphs of lacrosse or the achievements of the baseball champion.
Chapter 10
 In drawing to a conclusion I come now to refer to a subject which is naturally embraced in an address intended to review the progress of culture in this country, and that is what should have, perhaps, been spoken of before, the condition of Art in the Dominion. As our public libraries[63] are small compared with those in the neighbouring union, and confined to three or four cities—Montreal being in some respects behind Toronto—so our public and private art galleries are very few in number and insignificant as respects the value and the greatness of the paintings. Even in the House of Commons, not long since, regret was expressed at the smallness of the Dominion contribution, one thousand dollars only, for the support of a so-called National Art Gallery at Ottawa, and the greater part of this paltry sum, it appeared, went to pay, not the addition of good paintings, but actually the current expenses of keeping it up. Hopes were thrown out by more than one member of the government, in the course of the discussion on the subject, that ere long a much larger amount would be annually voted to make the gallery more representative of the best Canadian art, and it was very properly suggested that it should be the rule to purchase a number of Canadian pictures regularly every year, and in this way stimulate the talent of our artists. Montreal at present has one fairly good museum of art, thanks to the liberality of two or three of her rich men, but so public spirited a city as Toronto, which numbers among its citizens a number of artists of undoubted merit, is conspicuous for its dearth of good pictures even in private collections, and for the entire absence of any public gallery. In Montreal there are also some very valuable and representative paintings of foreign artists in the residences of her wealthy men of business; but whilst it is necessary that we should have brought to this country from time to time such examples of artistic genius to educate our own people for better things, it is still desirable that Canadian millionaires and men of means and taste54 should encourage the best efforts of our own artists. It is said sometimes—and there is some truth in the remark—that Canadian art hitherto has been imitative rather than creative; but while we have pictures like those of L. R. O'Brien, W. Brymner, F. A. Verner, O. R. Jacobi, George Reid, F. M. Bell-Smith, Homer Watson, W. Raphael, Robert Harris, C. M. Manly, J. W. L. Forster, A. D. Patterson, Miss Bell, Miss Muntz, J. Pinhey, J. C. Forbes, Paul Peel—a young man of great promise too soon cut off—and of other excellent painters,[64][G] native born or adopted Canadians, illustrating in many cases, as do those of Mr. O'Brien notably, the charm and picturesqueness of Canadian scenery, it would seem that only sufficient encouragement is needed to develop a higher order of artistic performance among us. The Marquess of Lorne and the Princess Louise, during their too short residence in the Dominion, did something to stimulate a larger and better taste for art by the establishment of a Canadian Academy and the holding of several exhibitions; but such things can be of little practical utility if Canadians do not encourage the artists who are to contribute. It is to be hoped that the same spirit of generosity which is yearly building commodious science halls, and otherwise giving our universities additional opportunities for usefulness, will also ere long establish at least one fine art gallery in each of the older provinces, to illustrate not simply English and Foreign art, but the most original and highly executed work of Canadians themselves. Such galleries are so many object lessons—like that wondrous "White City" which has arisen by a western lake as suddenly as the palaces of eastern story—to educate the eye, form the taste and develop the higher faculties of our nature amid the material surroundings of our daily life. No doubt the creative and imaginative faculties of our people have not yet been developed to any noteworthy extent; the poems and paintings of native Canadians too frequently lack, and the little fiction so far written is entirely destitute of the essential elements of successful and permanent work in art and literature. But the deficiency in this respect has arisen not from the poverty of Canadian55 intellect, but rather from the absence of that general distribution of wealth on which art can alone thrive, the consequent want of galleries to cultivate a taste among the people for the best artistic productions, and above all from the existence of that spirit of intellectual self-depreciation which is essentially colonial, and leads not a few to believe that no good work of this kind can be done in mere dependencies.
The exhibition of American art at the world's fair is remarkable on the whole for individual expression, excellent colour and effective composition. It proves to a demonstration that the tendency is progressive, and that it is not too much to expect that a few decades hence this continent will produce a Corot, a Daubigny, a Bonnat, a Bouguereau or a Millais. Not the least gratifying feature of the exhibition has been the revelation to the foreign world—and probably to many Canadians as well—that there is already some artistic performance of a much higher order than was believed to exist in Canada, and that it has been adjudged worthy of special mention among the masterpieces that surround the paintings of our artists. This success, very moderate as it is, must stimulate Canadian painters to still greater efforts in the future, and should help to create a wider interest in their work among our own people, heretofore too indifferent to the labours of men and women, whose rewards have been small in comparison with the conscientiousness and earnestness they have given to the prosecution of their art.
The opportunities which Canadian artists have had of comparing their own work with that of the most artistic examples at the exhibition should be beneficial if they have made of them the best possible use. American and French art was particularly well represented at the exhibition, and was probably most interesting from a Canadian point of view, since our artists would naturally make comparisons with their fellow-workers on this continent, and at the same time closely study the illustrations of those French schools which now attract the greater number of students from this country, and have largely influenced—perhaps too much so at times—the later efforts of some well-known painters among us. A writer in the New York Nation has made some56 comparisons between the best works of the artists of France and the United States, which are supported by the testimony of critics who are able to speak with authority on the subject. The French notably excel "in seriousness of purpose and general excellence of work from a technical point of view, especially in the thorough knowledge of construction in both the figure and landscape pictures." On the other hand, the artists of the United States "show more diversity of aim and individuality of expression, as well as colour feeling." Some two or three Canadian artists give examples of those very qualities—especially in their landscapes—which, according to the New York critic, distinguish the illustrations of the art of the United States. As a rule, however, there is a want of individuality of expression, and of perfection of finish, in the work of Canadian artists, as even their relatively imperfect representation at Chicago has shown. The tendency to be imitative rather than creative is too obvious. Canadian painters show even a readiness to leave their own beautiful and varied scenery that they may portray that of other countries, and in doing so they have ceased in many cases to be original. But despite these defects, there is much hope in the general performance of Canadians even without that encouragement and sympathy which the artists of the United States have in a larger measure been able to receive in a country of greater wealth, population and intellectual culture.
Not only does the exhibition of paintings in the world's fair make one very hopeful of the future artistic development of this continent, but the beauty of the architectural design of the noble buildings which contain the treasures of art and industry, and of the decorative figures and groups of statuary that embellish these buildings and the surrounding grounds, is a remarkable illustration of the artistic genius that has produced so exquisite an effect in general, whatever defects there may be in minor details. A critic in the July number of the 'Quarterly Review,' while writing "in the presence of these lovely temples, domes, and colonnades under the burning American sky which adds a light and a transparency to all it rests upon," cannot help echoing the regret that this vision of beauty is but for a season, and57 expressing the hope that some one of the American money kings "may perpetuate his name on marble, by restoring, on the edge of this immense capital, amid parks and waters, that great central square which, were it only built of enduring materials, would stand without a rival in modern architecture." Perhaps the fine arts in the Dominion—where sculpture would be hardly heard of were it not for the French Canadian Hébert—may themselves even gain some stimulus from the examples of a higher conception of artistic achievement that is shown by this exhibition to exist in a country where a spirit of materialism has obtained the mastery so long. Canadian architecture hitherto has not been distinguished for originality of design—much more than art it has been imitative. In Montreal and Quebec the old buildings which represent the past have no architectural beauty, however interesting they may be to the antiquarian or the historian, and however well many of them harmonize with the heights of picturesque Quebec. Montreal is assuredly the most interesting city from an architectural point of view in Canada, simply for the reason that its architects have, as a rule, studied that effect of solidity and simplicity of design most in keeping with the grand mountain and the natural scenery that give such picturesqueness to an exceptionally noble site. While we see all over Canada—from Victoria on the Pacific to Halifax on the Atlantic[64a][H]—the evidences of greater comfort, taste and wealth in our private and public buildings, while we see many elaborate specimens of ecclesiastical art, stately piles of legislative halls, excellent specimens of Gothic and Tudor art in our colleges, expensive commercial and financial structures, and even civic palaces, yet they are often illustrative of certain well defined and prevalent types of architecture in the eastern and western cities of the United States. It cannot be said that Canada has produced an architect of original genius like Henry Hobson Richardson, who was cut off in the commencement of his career, but not before he had given the continent some admirable specimens of architectural art, in which his study of the Romanesque was specially conspicuous, and probably led the way to a higher ideal which has reached some58 realization in the city which must too soon disappear like the fabric of a vision, though one can well believe that, unlike a dream, it will leave a permanent impress on the intellectual development of the people who have conceived an exhibition so creditable from a purely artistic point of view.   
 
Chapter 11
 The Dominion of Canada possesses a noble heritage which has descended to us as the result of the achievement of Frenchmen, Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, who through centuries of trial and privation, showed an indomitable courage, patience and industry which it is our duty to imitate with the far greater opportunities we now enjoy of developing the latent material and intellectual resources of this fair land. Possessing a country rich in natural treasures and a population inheriting the institutions, the traditions and qualities of their ancestors, having a remarkable capacity for self-government, enjoying exceptional facilities for the acquisition of knowledge, having before us always the record of difficulties overcome against great odds in endeavouring to establish ourselves on this continent, we may well in the present be animated by the spirit of hope, rather than by that feeling of despair which some despondent thinkers and writers have too frequently on their lips when it is a question of the destiny in store for Canada. In the course of the coming decades—perhaps in four or five, or less—Canada will probably have determined her destiny—her position among the communities of the world; and, for one, I have no doubt the results will be far more gratifying to our national pride than the results of even the past thirty years, when we have been laying broad and deep the foundations of our present system of government. We have reason to believe that the material success of this confederation will be fully equalled by the intellectual efforts of a people who have sprung from nations whose not least enduring fame has been the fact that they have given to the world of letters a Shakespeare, a Molière, a Montesquieu, a Balzac, a Dickens, a Dudevant, a Tennyson, a Victor Hugo, a Longfellow,59 a Hawthorne, a Théophile Gauthier, and many other names that represent the best literary genius of the English and French races. All the evidence before us now goes to prove that the French language will continue into an indefinite future to be the language of a large and influential section of the population of Canada, and that it must consequently exercise a decided influence on the culture and intellect of the Dominion. It has been within the last four decades that the best intellectual work—both in literature and statesmanship—has been produced in French and English Canada, and the signs of intellectual activity in the same direction do not lessen with the expansion of the Dominion. The history of England from the day the Norman came into the island until he was absorbed in the original Saxon element, is not likely to be soon repeated in Canada, but in all probability the two nationalities will remain side by side for an unknown period to illustrate on the northern half of the continent of America the culture and genius of the two strongest and brightest powers of civilization. As both of these nationalities have vied with each other in the past to build up this confederation on a large and generous basis of national strength and greatness, and have risen time and again superior to those racial antagonisms created by differences of opinion at great crises of our history—antagonisms happily dispelled by the common sense, reason and patriotism of men of both races—so we should in the future hope for that friendly rivalry on the part of the best minds among French and English Canadians which will best stimulate the genius of their people in art, history, poetry and romance. In the meantime, while this confederation is fighting its way out of its political difficulties, and resolving wealth and refinement from the original and rugged elements of a new country, it is for the respective nationalities not to stand aloof from one another, but to unite in every way possible for common intellectual improvement, and give sympathetic encouragement to the study of the two languages and to the mental efforts of each other. It was on this enlightened principle of sympathetic interest that the Royal Society was founded and on which alone it can expect to obtain any permanent measure of success. If the English and60 French always endeavour to meet each other on this friendly basis in all the communities where they live side by side as well as on all occasions that demand common thought and action and cultivate that social and intellectual intercourse which may at all events weld them both as one in spirit and aspiration, however different they may continue in language and temperament, many prejudices must be removed, social life must gain in charm, and intellect must be developed by finding strength where it is weak, and grace where it is needed in the mental efforts of the two races. If in addition to this widening of the sympathies of our two national elements, we can see in the Dominion generally less of that provincialism which means a narrowness of mental vision on the part of our literary aspirants, and prevents Canadian authors reaching a larger audience in other countries, then we shall rise superior to those weaknesses of our intellectual character which now impede our mental development, and shall be able to give larger scope to what original and imaginative genius may exist among our people. So with the expansion of our mental horizon, with the growth of experience and knowledge, with the creation of a wider sympathy for native talent, with the disappearance of that tendency to self-depreciation which is so essentially colonial, and with the encouragement of more self-reliance and confidence in our own intellectual resources, we may look forward with some degree of hopefulness to conditions of higher development, and to the influence on our national character of what can best elevate Canadians and make them even happier and wiser,
"The love of country, soaring far above all party strife;
The love of learning, art and song,—the crowning grace of life."

The End