that elapsed from the Union of 1840 to the Confederation of 1867. Where a humble log cabin once rose among the black pine stumps, a comfortable and in many cases expensive mansion, of wood or more durable material, had become the home of the Canadian farmer, who, probably, in his early life, had been but a poor peasant in the mother country. He himself, whose life had been one of unremitting toil and endeavour, showed no culture, but his children reaped the full benefits of the splendid opportunities of acquiring knowledge afforded by the country which owed its prosperity to their father and men like him. The homes of such men, in the most favoured districts, were no longer the abodes of rude industry, but illustrative, in not a few cases, of that comfort and refinement which must be the natural sequence of the general distribution of wealth, the improvement of internal intercourse, and the growth of education. When France no longer owned a foot of land in British North America, except two or three barren islets on the coast of Newfoundland, the total population of the provinces known now as Canada was not above seventy thousand souls, nearly all French. From that time to 1840, the population of the different provinces made but a slow increase, owing to the ignorance that prevailed as to Canada, the indifference of English statesmen in respect to colonization, internal dissensions in the country itself, and its slow progress, as compared with the great republic on its borders. Yet, despite these obstacles to advancement, by 1841 the population of Canada reached nearly a million and a half, of whom at least fifty-five per cent. were French Canadians. Then the tide of immigration set in this direction, until at last the total population of Canada rose, in 1867, to between three and four millions, or an increase of more than a hundred per cent. in a quarter of a century. By the last Census of 1870, we have some idea of the national character of this population--more than eighty per cent. being Canadian by birth, and, consequently, identified in all senses of the term with the soil and prosperity of the country. Whilst the large proportion of the people are necessarily engaged in those industrial pursuits which are the basis of a country's material prosperity, the statistics show the rapid growth of the classes who live by mental labour, and who are naturally the leaders in matters of culture. The total number of the professional class in all the provinces was some 40,000, of whom 4,436 were clergymen, 109 judges, 264 professors, 3,000 advocates and notaries, 2,792 physicians and surgeons, 13,400 teachers, 451 civil engineers, 232 architects; and for the first time we find mention of a special class of artists and _litterateurs_, 590 in all, and these evidently do not include journalists, who would, if enumerated, largely swell the number.