form a permanent and instructive reference library for scholars and students in the same branches of thought and study all over the world. In fact, the essays must necessarily be such as cannot be well published except through the assistance granted by a government, as in our case, or by the liberality of private individuals. The society, in fact, is in its way attempting just such work as is done by the Smithsonian Institute, on a large scale, at Washington, so far as the publication of important transactions is concerned. I admit that sometimes essays have appeared, but many more are offered from time to time, better suited to the periodicals of the day than to the pages of a work of which the object is to perpetuate the labours of students and scholars, and not the efforts of the mere literary amateur or trifler in _belles-lettres_. But while there must be necessarily such limitations to the scope of the 'Transactions,' which are largely scientific in their treatment, room will be always made for papers on any economic, social or ethical subject which, by their acute reasoning, sound philosophy and originality of thought, demand the attention of students everywhere. Such literary criticism as finds place now and then in the dignified old 'Quarterly Review' or in the 'Contemporary' will be printed whenever it is written by any Canadian author with the same power of keen analysis and judicious appreciation of the thoughts and motives of an author that we find notably in that charming study of Tennyson's "Princess," by S. E. Dawson,[59] who is a Canadian by birth, education and feeling. No doubt there is room in the Dominion for a magazine combining the features of 'Blackwood,' the 'Contemporary' and the 'Quarterly Review'; that is to say, poetry, fiction, criticism, reviews of topics of the day, and, in fact, original literary effort of the higher order, which, though mostly ephemeral in its character, must have much influence for the time being on the culture and the education of the public mind. Since the days of the old 'Canadian Monthly,'[60] which, with all its imperfections, contained much excellent work, all efforts in the same direction have been deserving of little encouragement; and, in fact, if such a venture is to succeed hereafter it must have behind it sufficient capital to engage the assistance of the best Canadian writers, who now send their work to American and English periodicals. Such a magazine must be carefully edited, and not made the dumping-ground for the crude efforts of literary dabblers or for romantic gush and twaddle, but must be such a judicious selection of the best Canadian talent as will evoke comparison with the higher class of periodicals I have mentioned. We have only one literary paper of merit in this country, and that is 'The Week,' which, despite all the indifference that is too apt to meet a journal not influenced by party motives, has kept its literary