of the English tongue surpasses all his versatile compatriots—­of Sir Charles Tupper, Mr. Foster and others who might be mentioned, recall the most brilliant period of parliamentary annals (1867—­1873), when in the first parliament of the Dominion the most prominent men of the provinces were brought into public life, under the new conditions of federal union.  The debating power of the provincial legislative bodies is excellent, and the chief defects are the great length and discursiveness of the speeches on local as well as on national questions.  It is also admitted that of late years there has been a tendency to impair the dignity and to lower the tone of discussion.

Many Canadians have devoted themselves to art since 1867, and some Englishmen will recognise the names of L.R.  O’Brien, Robert Harris, J.W.L.  Forster, Homer Watson, George Reid—­the painter of “The Foreclosure of the Mortgage,” which won great praise at the World’s Fair of Chicago—­John Hammond, F.A.  Verner, Miss Bell, Miss Muntz, W. Brymner, all of whom are Canadians by birth and inspiration.  The establishment of a Canadian Academy of Art by the Princess Louise, and of other art associations, has done a good deal to stimulate a taste for art, though the public encouragement of native artists is still very inadequate, when we consider the excellence already attained under great difficulties in a relatively new country, where the great mass of people has yet to be educated to a perception of the advantages of high artistic effort.

Sculpture would be hardly known in Canada were it not for the work of the French Canadian Hebert, who is a product of the schools of Paris, and has given to the Dominion several admirable statues and monuments of its public men.  While Canadian architecture has hitherto been generally wanting in originality of conception, the principal edifices of the provinces afford many good illustrations of effective adaptation of the best art of Europe.  Among these may be mentioned the following:—­the parliament and departmental buildings at Ottawa, admirable examples of Italian Gothic; the legislative buildings at Toronto, in the Romanesque style; the English cathedrals in Montreal and Fredericton, correct specimens of early English Gothic; the French parish church of Notre-Dame, in Montreal, attractive for its stately Gothic proportions; the university of Toronto, an admirable conception of Norman architecture; the Canadian Pacific railway station at Montreal and the Frontenac Hotel at Quebec, fine examples of the adaptation of old Norman architecture to modern necessities; the provincial buildings at Victoria, in British Columbia, the general design of which is Renaissance, rendered most effective by pearl-grey stone and several domes; the headquarters of the bank of Montreal, a fine example of the Corinthian order, and notable for the artistic effort to illustrate, on the walls of the interior, memorable scenes in Canadian history; the county and civic buildings of