I9OI-2 TRANSACTIOXS. 23 



Mr. Charles G. D. Roberts is a man of exceptionally 

 wide intellectual activity. He was educated at King's Col- 

 lege, Windsor, Nova Scotia, the same venerable institution 

 from, which graduated Haliburton and niany others who have 

 left their mark on Canadian literature or public life. Mr. 

 Roberts subsequently filled the chair of English Litera- 

 ture at King's College for sexeral years. He afterwards 

 edited the Toronto Week^ and was for a time associate editor 

 of the New York Illustrated American. Of late years he has 

 devoted himself entirely to literary work. Even before he left 

 college Mr. Roberts had begun his literary career. His first 

 book of verse was published about this time, and it was fol- 

 lowed at intervals by some half dozen other volumes of poetry, 

 the best of which he is about to re-publish in a Collected Edi- 

 tion. I He has also found time to write an excellent " History 

 of Canada," a Canadian Guide-Book, and, what we are more 

 immediately concerned with, several books of short-stories, 

 and a series of historical romances. 



His first romance was " The Forge in the Forest," pub- 

 lished in 1897, and this was followed by '' A Sister to Evange- 

 line," which is i'T the nature of a sequel to the first book. 

 The scene of both novels is laid in Nova Scotia, in the davs 

 when the Acadians were still tilling their dykelands around 

 Grand Pre, and the Black Abbe was plotting for the over- 

 throw of English authority in the Province. These stories 

 are excellent examples of that very popular type of ficiicn — 

 the historical novel. No one is more competent to write 

 authoritatively and entertainingly of the romantic incidents 

 of early days in Nova Scotia, than Mr. Roberts. In these 

 books he has charmingly combined the varacity of the his- 

 torian with the imagination of the novelist. They are 

 among the best books of the kind that we have yet had in 



1. Published in 1901. It embodies an excellent selection of his 

 verses, through one would perhaps have liked to see a few more of the 

 earlier poems. 



