of the establishment of the Quebec Historical Society, an event in the literary annals of Canada; of the foundation of the first circulating library in the City of Halifax, said to contain a number of valuable works. In 1824, H. A. Cunningham published, in Montreal, a rival publication, the _Canadian Review, and Literary and Historical Journal_, which appears to have excited the ire of the editor of the _Canadian Magazine_, for he devotes several pages of one issue to a criticism of its demerits. But these publications had only an ephemeral existence, and were succeeded by others. One of those was the _Museum_, edited by ladies in Montreal, in 1833. It contained some articles of merit, with a good deal of sentimental gush, [Footnote: The veteran editor of the _Quebec Mercury_ thus pleasantly hit off this class of literature, always appreciated by boarding-school misses and milliners' apprentices:--'"The Cousins," written by M. ----, we candidly admit we did not encounter. When a man has arrived at that time of life when he is compelled to use spec----no, not so bad as that, but _lunettes_, in order to accommodate the text to his eyes, and finds at the conclusion of an article such a passage as the following: "Beneath that knoll, at the foot of that weeping ash, side by side, in the bosom of one grave lie Reginald and Charlotte de Conrci"--when a semi-centenarian meets such a passage in such a situation, it is a loss of time for him to turn back and threading way through the mazes of the story.'] such as one found in the keepsakes and other gift books of those days. The first magazine of ability in the West appears to have been the _Canadian Magazine_, edited by Mr. Sibbald, and published at Toronto in 1833. The next periodical, which lasted many years, was the _Literary Garland_, published in Montreal, in conjunction with Mr. John Gibson, [Footnote: These two gentlemen were long associated in the partnership, widely known throughout Canada, as that of Lovell & Gibson, parliamentary printers.] by that veteran publisher, John Lovell, a gentleman to whom the country owes much for his zeal and enterprise in all such literary matters. All these facts were illustrative of the growth of literary and cultured taste throughout the Provinces, even in those early times. But it must be admitted that then, as now, the intellectual progress of Canada was very slow compared with that of the United States, where, during the times of which I am writing, literature was at last promising to be a profession, Cooper, Irving and Poe having already won no little celebrity at home and abroad. It was not till the Canadas were re-united and population and wealth poured into the country that culture began to be more general. Sixteen years after Mrs. Jameson published her account of Canada, another writer [Footnote: W. H. Kigston. 1852. 2 vols] visited Toronto, and wrote in very flattering terms of the appearance of