the United States--a practice stopped
by statute in 1846.

Adequate provision, however, was made for the higher education of youth
in all the provinces. "I know of no people," wrote Lord Durham of Lower
Canada, "among whom a larger provision exists for the higher kinds of
elementary education." The piety and benevolence of the early possessors
of the country founded seminaries and colleges, which gave an education
resembling the kind given in the English public schools, though more
varied. In Upper Canada, so early as 1807, grammar schools were
established by the government. By 1837 Upper Canada College--an
institution still flourishing--offered special advantages to youths
whose parents had some money. In Nova Scotia King's College--the oldest
university in Canada--had its beginning as an academy as early as 1788,
and educated many eminent men during its palmy days. Pictou Academy was
established by the Reverend Dr. McCulloch as a remonstrance against the
sectarianism of King's; and the political history of the province was
long disturbed by the struggle of its promoters against the narrowness
of the Anglicans, who dominated the legislative council, and frequently
rejected the grant made by the assembly. Dalhousie College was founded
in 1820 by Lord Dalhousie, then governor of Nova Scotia, to afford that
higher education to all denominations which old King's denied. Acadia
College was founded by the Baptists at Wolfville, on a gently rising
ground overlooking the fertile meadows of Grand Pre. The foundations of
the University of New Brunswick were laid in 1800. McGill University,
founded by one of those generous Montreal merchants who have always been
its benefactors, received a charter in 1821, but it was not opened until
1829. The Methodists laid the foundation of Victoria College at Cobourg
in 1834, but it did not commence its work until after the Union; and the
same was the case with King's College, the beginning of the University
of Toronto.

We need not linger on the literary output of those early times. Joseph
Bouchette, surveyor-general, had made in the first part of the century a
notable contribution to the geography and cartography of Lower Canada.
Major Richardson, who had served in the war of 1812 and in the Spanish
peninsula, wrote in 1833 "Wacousta or the Prophecy," a spirited romance
of Indian life. In Nova Scotia the "Sayings and Doings of Sam Slick, of
Slickville"--truly a remarkable original creation