but whilst it is necessary that we should have brought to this country from time to time such examples of artistic genius to educate our own people for better things, it is still desirable that Canadian millionaires and men of means and taste should encourage the best efforts of our own artists. It is said sometimes--and there is some truth in the remark--that Canadian art hitherto has been imitative rather than creative; but while we have pictures like those of L. R. O'Brien, W. Brymner, F. A. Verner, O. R. Jacobi, George Reid, F. M. Bell-Smith, Homer Watson, W. Raphael, Robert Harris, C. M. Manly, J. W. L. Forster, A. D. Patterson, Miss Bell, Miss Muntz, J. Pinhey, J. C. Forbes, Paul Peel--a young man of great promise too soon cut off--and of other excellent painters,[64][G] native born or adopted Canadians, illustrating in many cases, as do those of Mr. O'Brien notably, the charm and picturesqueness of Canadian scenery, it would seem that only sufficient encouragement is needed to develop a higher order of artistic performance among us. The Marquess of Lorne and the Princess Louise, during their too short residence in the Dominion, did something to stimulate a larger and better taste for art by the establishment of a Canadian Academy and the holding of several exhibitions; but such things can be of little practical utility if Canadians do not encourage the artists who are to contribute. It is to be hoped that the same spirit of generosity which is yearly building commodious science halls, and otherwise giving our universities additional opportunities for usefulness, will also ere long establish at least one fine art gallery in each of the older provinces, to illustrate not simply English and Foreign art, but the most original and highly executed work of Canadians themselves. Such galleries are so many object lessons--like that wondrous "White City" which has arisen by a western lake as suddenly as the palaces of eastern story--to educate the eye, form the taste and develop the higher faculties of our nature amid the material surroundings of our daily life. No doubt the creative and imaginative faculties of our people have not yet been developed to any noteworthy extent; the poems and paintings of native Canadians too frequently lack, and the little fiction so far written is entirely destitute of the essential elements of successful and permanent work in art and literature. But the deficiency in this respect has arisen not from the poverty of Canadian intellect, but rather from the absence of that general distribution of wealth on which art can alone thrive, the consequent want of galleries to cultivate a taste among the people for the best artistic productions, and above all from the existence of that spirit of intellectual self-depreciation which is essentially colonial, and leads not a few to believe that no good work of this kind can be done in mere dependencies.