ablished 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 of the English
tongue surpasses all his versatile compatriots--of Sir Charles Tupper,
Mr. Foster and others who might be mentioned, recall the most br