The French Canadians have devoted much time and attention to that fruitful field of research which the study of the customs and antiquities of their ancestors opens up to them. The names of Jacques Viger and Faribault, Sir Louis Lafontaine, the Abbes Laverdiere, and Verrault are well known as those of men who devoted themselves to the accumulation of valuable materials illustrative of the historic past, as the library of Laval University can testify. The edition of Champlain's works, by the Abbe Laverdiere for some years librarian of Laval, is a most creditable example of critical acumen and typographical skill. In the same field there is much yet to be explored by the zealous antiquarian who has the patience to delve among the accumulations of matter that are hidden in Canadian and European archives. This is a work, however, which can be best done by the State; and it is satisfactory to know that something has been attempted of late years in this direction by the Canadian Government--the collection of the Haldimand papers, for instance. But we are still far behind our American neighbours in this respect, as their State libraries abundantly prove. The Canadian ballad was only known for years by the favourite verses written by the poet Moore, which, however musical, have no real semblance to the veritable ballads with which the voyageurs have for centuries kept time as they pushed over the lakes and rivers of Canada and the North-west. Dr. Larue and M. Ernest Gagnon have given us a compilation of this interesting feature of French Canadian literature, which is hardly yet familiar to the English population of Canada. Other French Canadian names occur to the writer, but it is impossible to do justice to them in this necessarily limited review. 'Les Legendes,' of the Abbe Casgrain, 'Les Pionniers de l'Ouest,' of M. Joseph Tasse, and the works of M. Faucher de St. Maurice, are among other illustrations of the national spirit that animates French Canadian writers, and makes them deservedly popular among their compatriots.