The name of Dr. Todd is well known throughout the British empire, and indeed wherever institutions of government are studied, as that of an author of most useful works on the English and Canadian constitutions.  Sir William Dawson, for many years the energetic principal of McGill University, the scientific prominence of which is due largely to his mental bias, was the author of several geological books, written in a graceful and readable style.  The scientific work of Canadians can be studied chiefly in the proceedings of English, American and Canadian societies, especially, of late years, in the transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, established over eighteen years ago by the Marquess of Lorne when governor-general of the Dominion.  This successful association is composed of one hundred and twenty members who have written “memoirs of merit or rendered eminent services to literature or science.”

On the whole, there have been enough good poems, histories, and essays, written and published in Canada during the last four or five decades, to prove that there has been a steady intellectual growth on the part of the Canadian 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.  The intellectual faculties of Canadians only require larger opportunities for their exercise to bring forth rich fruit.  The progress in the years to come will be much greater than that Canadians have yet shown, and necessarily so, with the wider distribution of wealth, the dissemination of a higher culture, and a greater confidence in their own mental strength, and in the opportunities that the country offers to pen and pencil.  What is now wanted is the cultivation of a good style and artistic workmanship.

Much of the daily literature of Canadians—­indeed the chief literary aliment of large numbers—­is the newspaper press, which illustrates necessarily the haste, pressure and superficiality of writings of that ephemeral class.  Canadian journals, however, have not yet descended to the degraded sensationalism of New York papers, too many of which circulate in Canada to the public detriment.  On the whole, the tone of the most ably conducted journals—­the Toronto Globe, and the Montreal Gazette notably—­is quite on a level with the tone of debate in the legislative bodies of the country.

Now, as in all times of Canada’s history, political life claims many strong, keen and cultured intellects, though at the same time it is too manifest that the tendency of democratic conditions and heated party controversy is to prevent the most highly educated and sensitive organisations from venturing on the agitated and unsafe sea of political passion and competition.  The speeches of Sir Wilfrid Laurier—­the eloquent French Canadian premier, who in his mastery