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 is 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. IV. 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. James W. Johnstone, long the leader of the Conservative