the work for which it was founded, by co-operating with scholars and students throughout the Dominion, by showing every possible sympathy with all those engaged in the work of art, culture and education, can look forward hopefully to the future; and all it asks from the Canadian public at large is confidence in its work and objects, which are in no sense selfish or exclusive, but are influenced by a sincere desire to do what it can to promote historic truth and scientific research, and give a stimulus in this way to the intellectual development of this young Dominion, yet in the infancy of its literary life.[F] [Footnote F: In the course of a speech by the Earl of Derby, in answer to a farewell address from the Royal Society, he took occasion to make some remarks with reference to its work and usefulness, which have been given in full in the Appendix (Note 58_a_) as the impartial opinion of a governor-general who always took a deep interest in all matters affecting the intellectual as well as material development of the Dominion.] VIII. This necessarily brief review of the work of the Royal Society could not well be left out of an address like this; and I can now pass on to some reflections that occur to me on the general subject. In the literature of biography, so susceptible of a treatment full of human interests and sympathies--as chatty Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and Lockhart's "Life of Scott," notably illustrate--we have little to show, except it be the enterprise of publishers and the zeal of too enthusiastic friends. Nor is it necessary to dwell on the literature of the law, which is becoming in a measure more of a technical and less of a learned profession in the larger sense, unless, indeed, our university schools of political science eventually elevate it to a wider range of thought. Several excellent books of a purely technical character have been compiled from year to year, but no Kent, or Story, or Cooley has yet appeared to instruct us by a luminous exposition of principle, or breadth of knowledge. Those who know anything of Dr. Edward Blake's great intellectual power, of his wealth of legal learning, of his insight into the operations of political constitutions, cannot deny that he at least could produce a work which might equal in many respects those of the great Americans here named; but it looks very much at present as if he, and others I could mention, will give up their best years to the absorbing and uncertain struggles of politics, rather than to the literature of that profession to which they might, under different conditions, raise imperishable memorials. From the pulpit many of us hear from time to time eloquent and well reasoned efforts which tell us how much even the class, necessarily most conservative in its traditions, and confined in its teachings, has been forced by modern tendencies to enlarge its human sympathies and widen its intellectual horizon; but the published sermons are