The group of prose writers and romancers is increasing every day. One of the best, without doubt, is M. J. C. Taché, the author of three legends, each of which characterizes an epoch in the history of the Indians. M. de Gaspé, with his “Ancient Canadians,” and M. Joseph Marmette, with his historic romances have acquired a well merited reputation.
What, then, shall be the aim in the future of Canadian literature? To acquire new strength and vigor without ceasing the study of the past; to revive the glorious annals; to gather with a pious care its legends; to identify itself also with the present; to paint the manners and the contemporaneous social life; to note and to report the majestic symphony of their land; never to lose sight of the thought of Carlyle, that the universe is a temple as well as a workshop. Such will be the duty of Canadian writers.
The Canadians through all the years since their country passed out of the hands and the control of the French, have clung to them with great affection, drawn by some profound and mystic instinct, by the lines of heredity, the power of traditions, the religion of memory. They are not ignorant of the fact that if they had remained united to France, they would not now have, in all probability, their free social and religious institutions; they would likely have formed an administrative colony such as Algeria. They know that it was England who sent them, under hard circumstances, perhaps, to the school of liberty, and to her they are indebted for their prosperity, but they look to France still as their mother country. Why should not that country give them some more solid proof of its affection? While with South America the annual exchanges of France are counted by the hundred million, and great numbers of French people emigrate there, her total commerce with Canada does not exceed $15,000,000, and it is with great difficulty that she has commenced to send thither a few of her citizens. Why should not French emigration direct itself toward a country where wages are good, the soil fertile, where property offers itself to all, and where a welcome is awaiting them? Why should not the French go to visit the Canadians and learn of them how a people became and remain free?
SOME AMERICAN MUSEUMS.
BY CLARENCE COOK.
Under this heading it is intended to give in successive numbers of The Chautauquan descriptions of the principal Art Museums of our country: The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington. We begin in the present number with the Boston Museum.
In the year 1870 the trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts were organized under a charter from the Massachusetts legislature. It was not, however, until 1876 that a building was erected in which the pictures, casts, antiquities, engravings and objects of curiosity which formed the nucleus of its present extensive collections could be exhibited to the public.