Roughing it in the Bush; or Life in Canada (1852), and Life in the Clearing versus the Bush (1853). These books describe the conditions of life in the early settlements more faithfully and, withal, more humorously than any other writer has described them.

History is more successfully organised in Canada at the present time than any other branch of literature. Our archives are being systematically explored, and societies exist for the purpose of editing old, and publishing new, material of a historical nature. Our earliest historians, Heriot, Smith and Christie were of the laboriously dull type that history frequently breeds. John Charles Dent, an Englishman by birth, was much more entertaining; but his partisanship impairs the value of his work. This consists of two readable histories, The Last Forty Years and The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion. The most complete and painstaking of our histories, dull without being scientific, but quite praiseworthy, is William Kingsford's History of Canada, which covers the period from the discovery of Canada to the union of 1841. Ten volumes stand to Kingsford's credit, and he began to write history at the age of sixtyfive. Haliburton's Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia (1829) is still useful. Two other works by him-The Bubbles of Canada (1837) and Rule and Misrule of the English in America (1851)-have a historical tinge.

David

The war of 1812 has been variously recorded. Thompson was imprisoned for debt as a result of his historic venture on this theme. Major John Richardson's War of 1812, in its re-edited form (1902), presents much valuable material. James Hannay produced a History of Acadia and a War of 1812. Lady Edgar, in her Ten Years of Peace and War in Upper Canada, presents a most interesting account of the time, based largely on the correspondence of the Ridout family to which she belonged. Her Life of Brock in the Makers of Canada series is clearly and entertainingly written. Lady Edgar also wrote a history of Maryland in the eighteenth century under the title A Colonial Governor in Maryland.

Sir John George Bourinot is the author of a popular history called The Story of Canada. He was a diligent and useful writer upon Canadian affairs, and his position as clerk of the Canadian house of commons gave him peculiar opportunities

The leading Ca

for the study of constitutional problems.
nadian writer, however, on constitutional procedure was Alpheus
Todd, whose works will be found in the bibliography. Two
men, Joseph Howe and George Morris Grant, exercised by their
voice and pen a powerful influence on the political thought of
Canada. Their literary output was slender and does not give
the full measure of their ability or influence.

There are some novels that have honestly died, and some that have never lived. Canada's fiction may, with few exceptions, be classed in one or other of these categories. The Bibliography of Canadian Fiction gives the titles of nearly one hundred and fifty novels written by authors deceased.

Mrs. Brook has the distinction of producing, in 1769, the first novel, Emily Montague, which essayed a description of Canadian conditions at that interesting and remote time. Canadian fiction proper is supposed to date from the year 1832, when John Richardson published Wacousta. It is a curious book. To a certain point midway in the narrative, it holds the reader's attention, and then breaks down into a series of wildly impossible situations without one redeeming human touch to save them from utter absurdity. The Canadian Brothers is a still weaker effort. Mrs. Leprohon was a constant contributor in prose and verse to The Literary Garland, a periodical of some repute in the middle of the last century. Her novels are gracefully written, with some idea of construction, and no little discernment of character and motive. Antoinette de Mirecourt is the best of her eight books. Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie were sisters who diligently devoted themselves to writing. Mrs. Traill, whose chief distinction was gained in natural history, wrote also several novels, of which Lost in the Backwoods, published in London in 1852, under the title The Canadian Crusoes, is the best. Her sister Mrs. Moodie has been referred to for her interesting descriptions of pioneer life. James de Mille was prolific and popular in his day. His novels were extravagantly romantic.

William Kirby wrote the best Canadian novel, Le Chien d'Or, or The Golden Dog, published in 1877. It is an ambitious book, cast in a large historic mould. The scene is laid in the middle of the eighteenth century, and the actors of the drama

are the notabilities of Quebec, with such subsidiary characters as are necessary to drive the plot along. Signs of an unpractised hand abound in the book, but its merits are very considerable.

William McLennan wrote two novels, a book of short stories and a useful volume of verse, Songs of Old Canada, translated from the French. Spanish John, his only independent novel, possesses much literary merit which, until recent years, has not been a conspicuous virtue among Canadian writers. The Span o' Life, written in collaboration, is a stirring tale of the days of prince Charlie. McLennan's collection of short stories In Old France and New is described in its title. His habitant tales are an interesting prose counterpart of the work of Drummond.

CHAPTER XII

The Literature of Australia and New

TH

Zealand

HE British settlement in Australia began only in the last quarter of the eighteenth century; and, in the intervening years, an increasing but still small population has been chiefly engaged in agriculture and commerce. The class of settler needed for the development of the country was not one, who, as in the settlement of the American colonies, could carry with him to a new land the traditions and civilisation of the old. The labour of laying the material bases of prosperity was, for long, too severe to leave time for intellectual cultivation; and the country has enjoyed but little of the leisure which is favourable to the practice of literature. Nevertheless, both the quantity and quality of English literature produced in Australia give evidence of the vigour which is characteristic of the Australian. If Australian life and thought has no background of inherited romance and legend, it has its own tales of heroism, its own strong colour and other incentives to literary expression. Nature, here magnificently beautiful and there desolate and terrible; the exploration of vast deserts; the conflict with drought and storm; the turbulent period of the gold-diggings; the free life in sparsely populated country; the prevalence of horses; the neighbourhood of the sea and, in recent years, the passionate assertion of democratic libertyall these have furnished material for literature, and, especially, for poetry, with distinctive characteristics. Australian poetry shows a prevalence of swinging metres, which suggest the movement of horses or the roll of great waves. It consists largely of narrative and character-sketch. Much of it is genially humor

ous; together with a warm appreciation of heroism and devotion, it shows a delight in the odd types of character (and rascality) fostered by the conditions of life in a young country. Where it is serious, it frequently expresses a gloomy view of life, induced, perhaps, by the hardships and the uncertainty that attended the days of settlers, explorers and gold-diggers.

The earliest Australian poetry was rather an inheritance from Great Britain than a native growth. In 1819, Charles Lamb's friend, Barron Field, who, in 1816, became judge of the supreme court of New South Wales, and remained in Australia till 1824, published in Sydney, for private circulation, First Fruits of Australian Poetry. In 1823, a born Australian, William Charles Wentworth, wrote in competition for the chancellor's medal at the university of Cambridge a poem entitled Australasia, which was printed in London and shortly afterwards appeared in the first Australian newspaper, The Sydney Gazette. In 1826, another Australian, Charles Tompson, junior, published in Sydney his poems, Wild Notes from the Lyre of a Native Minstrel. The names of Australian fauna and flora and references to the aboriginal races are found creeping further into English verse in the poems of John Dunmore Lang, a presbyterian divine, who arrived in New South Wales in 1823 and took a prominent part in Australian politics. His Aurora Australis, published in Sydney in 1826, is Australian at least in so far as it applies inherited modes of expression to the beauties and characteristics of his adopted country. Lang was not afraid to write:

At length an occupant was given

To traverse each untrodden wild,
The rudest mortal under Heaven,

Stern Nature's long-forgotten child!
Compatriot of the tall emu,

The wombat and the kangaroo!

The decade 1840-1850, preceding the rush to the gold-diggings, was an important period in the history of Australian poetry. The development of New South Wales brought about an increase in the number of newspapers, and the newspapers gave opportunities for the publication of verse. Encouragement came, also, from Sir Henry Parkes, who, having emigrated