obviously very superficial; but slight as it is he has used it with a masterly skill to give Canada a part in his story--to show how closely associated were the fortunes of the colony with the French Court,--with the plans and intrigues of the king and his mistresses, and of the wily ecclesiastics who made all subservient to their deep purpose. It would seem from our failure to cultivate successfully the same popular branch of letters that Canadians are wanting in the inventive and imaginative faculty, and that the spirit of materialism and practical habits, which has so long necessarily cramped literary effort in this country, still prevents happy ventures in this direction. It is a pity that no success has been won in this country,--as in Australia by Mrs. Campbell Praed, "Tasma," and many others,--in the way of depicting those characteristics of Canadian life, in the past and present, which, when touched by the imaginative and cultured intellect, will reach the sympathies and earn the plaudits of all classes of readers at home and abroad. Perhaps, Mr. Gilbert Parker,[49] now a resident of London, but a Canadian by birth, education and sympathies, will yet succeed in his laudable ambition of giving form and vitality to the abundant materials that exist in the Dominion, among the habitants on the old seigneuries of the French province, in that historic past of which the ruins still remain in Montreal and Quebec, in the Northwest with its quarrels of adventurers in the fur trade, and in the many other sources of inspiration that exist in this country for the true story-teller who can invent a plot and give his creations a touch of reality, and not that doll-like, saw-dust appearance that the vapid characters of some Canadian stories assume from the very poverty of the imagination that has originated them.