If it were possible within the compass of this address to give a list of the many histories, poems, essays and pamphlets that have appeared from the Canadian press during the first quarter of a century since the Dominion of Canada has been in existence, the number would astonish many persons who have not followed our literary activity. Of course the greater part of this work is ephemeral in its character and has no special value; much of the historical work is a dreary collection of facts and dates which shows the enterprise of school publishers and school teachers and is generally wanting in that picturesqueness and breadth of view which give interest to history and leave a vivid impression on the mind of the student. Most of these pamphlets have been written on religious, political or legal questions of the day. Many of the poems illustrate rather the aspirations of the school boy or maiden whose effusions generally appeared in the poet's corner of the village newspaper. Still there are even among these mere literary "transients" evidences of power of incisive argument and of some literary style. In fact, all the scientific, historical and poetical contributions of the period in question, make up quite a library of Canadian literature. And here let me observe in passing, some persons still suppose that _belles-lettres_, works of fiction, poetry and criticism, alone constitute literature. The word can take in its complete sense a very wide range, for it embraces the pamphlet or monograph on the most abstruse scientific, or mathematical or geographical or physical subject, as well as the political essay, the brilliant history, or the purely imaginative poem or novel. It is not so much the subject as the form and style which make them worthy of a place in literature. One of the most remarkable books ever written, the "Esprit des Lois" by Montesquieu, has won the highest place in literature by its admirable style, and in the science of politics by the importance of its matter. The works of Lyell, Huxley, Hunt, Dawson, Tyndall, and Darwin owe their great value not entirely to the scientific ideas and principles and problems there discussed, but also to the lucidity of style in which the whole subject is presented to the reader, whether versed or not in science. "Literature is a large word," says Matthew Arnold,[52] discussing with Tyndall this very subject; "it may mean everything written with letters or printed in a book. Euclid's Elements and Newton's Principia are thus literature. All knowledge that reaches us through books is literature. But as I do not mean, by knowing ancient Rome, knowing merely more or less of Latin _belles-lettres_, and taking no account of Rome's military, and political, and legal, and administrative work in the world; and as, by knowing ancient Greece, I understand knowing her as the giver of Greek art, and the guide to a free and right use of reason and to