Literature and the Fine Arts. xxxv 



them are veritable essays, not unworthy the trouble of pre- 

 serving. It would be untrue to say, that a newspaper- 

 reading people is of necessit}' a literary community. The 

 Americans, as we all know, have more newspapers in 

 proportion to population than an}' other nation in the world, 

 but as a people, they cannot certainly be regarded as literary, 

 and tliey themselves have confessed that they are not an 

 educated people. I justify this statement by reminding you 

 that a not undeservedly popular lecturer from the United 

 States, who visited these colonies only a few years since, told 

 us tliat 5,000,000 of the 50,000,000 of the great republic, 

 over ten years of age, could not even read ; that 6,250,000 

 could not write ; that of the 10,000,000 of voters in the 

 States, one in five could not write his name ; that of the 

 10,000,000 of children enrolled in the public schools, 

 7,500,000 were in absolute ignorance of the English alphabet. 

 He further said that in .34 cities, from 50 to 84 per cent, of 

 the children were not enrolled in schools at all ; that in 80 

 cities, the average attendance at school was only f of the 

 enrolment ; that in New York, 200,000 children had never 

 been to school at all ; that in Chicago only a third of the 

 children went to school ; and that in St. Louis, out of a 

 population of 106,000 persons, 50,000 were growing up 

 literally savages. These particulars were offered only as 

 samples of the literary destitution there prevailing, and they 

 were supplied by an American. Now in Victoria, according 

 to the last completed Year Book, nearly 95 per cent, of the 

 children at the school age were being educated either at state 

 or private schools. 



It does not follow, of course, that education as we know 

 it, confers the literary faculty, but at least it supplies a 

 ground work for a beginning. We may claim, therefore, 

 that as we have here educational facilities if not superior to 

 those of other states, yet equal to most of those who are best 

 supplied, we ought to be a literary community. 



The misfortune is, that many who enter upon a literary 

 career, appear to think that the calling requires no special 



