This monograph on the intellectual development of the Dominion was
delivered in substance as the presidential address to the Royal Society
of Canada at its May meeting of 1893, in Ottawa. Since then the author
has given the whole subject a careful revision, and added a number of
bibliographical and other literary notes which could not conveniently
appear in the text of the address, but are likely to interest those who
wish to follow more closely the progress of culture in a country still
struggling with the difficulties of the material development of half
a continent. This little volume, as the title page shows, is intended
as the commencement of a series of historical and other essays which
will be periodically reproduced, in this more convenient form for the
general reader, from the large quarto volumes of the Royal Society of
Canada, where they first appear.
OTTAWA, 1st October, 1893.