but space fails, and the former of these pieces can be read in the Victorian Anthology' of Edmund Clarence Stedman, and the latter in my Songs of the Great Dominion' (sometimes published under the title of Canadian Poems'), in the Canterbury Poets and Windsor series. In the same collections the hopes and emotions of the new patriotism are illustrated, and it is only necessary to explain that the national sentiment now formed in the great Dominion is not antagonistic, but complementary, to the imperial.

The new Canadian literature is thus chiefly a school of poetry. Into the same fields writers of fiction are, however, following, and of them more is perhaps to be expected than of the poets, for their schemes of treatment and choice of subjects, especially of characters, must necessarily be freer. The artistic phases of that immense and highly distinctive land have been hitherto but scratched upon the surface like the ploughing of the settler on its great prairies, which goes but a couple of inches deep. There is room for a school like the Russian, and it will yet come.

One has but to read Sladen's Australian Ballads' to see that Australasia is evidently going through an analogous process.

Mankind wants whatever will sincerely add to its knowledge or delight, and the native writers of these regions have in each case a large and rich special vein in which to mine treasure which the world, and especially their part of it, needs, and which no one else can supply.

"CHÂTEAUCLAIR," WESTMOUNT,

MONTREAL; February, 1897.

THE SUPPOSED SOURCE OF THE VICAR

OF WAKEFIELD,' AND

ITS TREAT

AMONG the facts brought to light by modern literary research, few present more interest than those which reveal the humble sources of the great works in Literature. Sometimes the merest trifle, insufficient to arouse more than the momentary attention of the ordinary reader, is seized by one of the gifted sons of genius, and upon so slender a framework is constructed an imposing literary monument, exhibiting deep dramatic interest and profound knowledge of the human mind, ornamented and embellished with metaphor and poetic thought, and rich flow of apt expression; in one word, a masterpiece. At other times, as in some of the plays of Shakespeare, the student is startled to find how much has been incorporated, plot, incidents, characters, and even whole passages, expressions and turns of thought, such as are generally regarded as the peculiar property, and often quoted as eminently characteristic of the distinguished borrower, in whose work, nevertheless, the unmistakable signs of genius may be found; the skill