a national work: the Quebec Historical Society, referred to on a previous page, the Toronto Canadian Institute, which has made not a few useful contributions to science and literature, and the Institut Canadien which has erected in Ottawa one of the handsomest structures yet raised in Canada by a literary association. In Ontario there are also some 100 Mechanics Institutes, including nearly 11,000 members, with an aggregate of 118,000 volumes in the libraries; [Footnote: 'Address of Mr. James Young, President of Mechanics' Institutes Association of Ontario (_Globe_, Sept. 24th, 1880).] and it is satisfactory to learn that institutions which may have an important influence on the industrial classes are to be placed on a more efficient basis. These facts illustrate that we are making progress in the right direction; but what we want, above all things, are public libraries, to which all classes may have free access, in the principal centres of population. The rich men of this country can devote a part of their surplus wealth to no more patriotic purpose than the establishment of such libraries in the places where they live, and in that way erect a monument for themselves far more honourable than any that may be achieved by expenditures on purely selfish objects. All through the New England and Central States we meet with such illustrations of private generosity, but there are few similar examples in Canada. Perhaps the handsome contribution recently made by Mr. Redpath towards the establishment of a museum in connection with McGill College--itself a memorial of private generosity--is a favourable augury of what we may often look for in the future, as the number of our wealthy men increase and they become more alive to the intellectual wants of those around them.