the city, and the many evidences of taste he noticed in the streets and homes of its people. At that time he tells us there were 'five or six large booksellers' shops, equal to any in the larger towns of England, and some of whom were publishers also.' Mr. Maclear had at that time 'published two very well-got-up volumes on Canada, by Mr. W. H. Smith, and was also the publisher of the _Anglo-American Magazine_, a very creditably conducted periodical.' Now, in this same City of Toronto, there are some forty stationers' and booksellers' establishments, small and large; whilst there are about one hundred altogether in the leading cities of the Provinces. Of the libraries, I shall have occasion to write some pages further on. Since 1840, Canadians have made many ambitious efforts in the walks of literature, though only a few works have achieved a reputation beyond our own country. Nova Scotia can claim the credit of giving birth to two men whose works, though in very different fields of intellectual effort, have won for them no little distinction abroad. 'Sam Slick' may now be considered an English classic, new editions of which are still published from year to year and placed on the bookseller's shelves with the works of Fielding, Smollett, Butler and Barham. The sayings and doings of the knowing clockmaker were first published by Mr. Howe in the columns of the old _Nova Scotia_, still published as the weekly edition of the Halifax _Chronicle_, for the purpose of preserving some good stories and anecdotes of early colonial life. Like many good things that appear in the Canadian press, the judge's humorous effort would, no doubt, have been forgotten long before these times, had not the eminent publisher, Mr. Richard Bentley, seen the articles and printed them in book form. The humour of the work soon established the reputation of the author, and together with his companionable qualities made the 'old judge' a favourite when he left his native province and settled in England, where he lived and died, like Cowley, Thomson, Pope, and other men known to fame, on the banks of the Thames. The comments of 'Sam Slick' are full of keen humour, and have a moral as well. When first published, the work was not calculated to make him popular with certain classes of his countrymen, impatient of the satire which touched off weaknesses and follies in the little social and political world of those laggard times; but now that the habits of the people have changed, and the Nova Scotia of the Clockmaker exists no longer, except perhaps in some lonely corner; every one laughs at his humorous descriptions of the slow old times, and confesses, that if things were as Sam has portrayed them in his quaint way, he only acted the part of a true moralist in laying them bare to the world, and aiming at them the pointed shafts of his ready satire. The work is likely to have a more enduring reputation than the mere mechanical humour of the productions of 'Mark Twain.' Many of his