24 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Association, with the original Quebec Library, came to an end. The 
Quebec Literary and Historical Society, which was founded in 1824, 
chiefly through the instrumentality of the then Governor General, 
the Earl of Dalhousie, has been an important factor in the intellectual 
life of Quebec ever since. It has published a number of volumes of 
valuable transactions, and its library now contains some 25,000 books 
and pamphlets. 
The only other libraries of any importance in the Province of 
Quebec are those of McGill University, established in 1855, and 
now containing 89,000 volumes, besides about 10,000 pamphlets 
(McGill is the only Canadian library using Cutter’s Expansive System) ; 
the Fraser Institute, Montreal, endowed by Hugh Fraser, opened in 
1885, and now containing 39,000 volumes; and the Sherbrooke Library 
and Art Union, the only remaining example of the once popular 
Mechanics Institutes, which spread from England to America many 
years ago, and in their day did good work. Their places are now, 
however, much more effectively in every way taken by public libraries 
supported by municipal rates, and open to the public in the widest 
possible sense. 
Among Canadian libraries the premier place must, of course, be 
given to the Library of Parliament at Ottawa, an institution which bears 
(or ought to bear) a somewhat similar relation to Canada, to that occu- 
pied by the Library of Congress, and the British Museum, in their res- 
pective countries. It is housed in a building which may be said without 
exaggeration to be the most beautiful library building in America,— 
if we except the mural decorations of the Boston Public Library, and 
of the Library of Congress. It is questionable, however, whether the 
Library of Parliament is, even relatively, of the same value to Canadian 
scholars and students as the great national libraries of England and 
the United States. This is not through any particular fault of the 
staff, who are almost uniformly courteous and obliging, but mainly 
because of the antiquated and cumbrous system by which the library 
is managed, and the absence of any desire on the part of the authorities 
to make the library one truly national in scope and helpfulness, rather 
than purely and simply a library for the use of members of Parliament 
during the few months of the session. Surely, librarians and the 
friends of libraries in Canada, are not unreasonable when they hope 
for the inauguration of a more effective and far-reaching policy as 
respects the Library of Parliament; a policy which will make that 
library, with its really splendid collections of books, the centre for 
all that is best in modern librarianship, a source of inspiration and 
helpfulness to other Canadian libraries, and of wide usefulness te 
