THE CANADIAN JOURNAL. 



int|oduction, 



" In the Infancy of a state arras do flourish, in the midJle-age 

 tliereof lettei-s, in the decHiie and fall commerce," a true saying 

 of the sage of Verulaiii, is this which we have chosen for a 

 motto, and arms, — the arms, namely, that swing the axe and 

 guide the plough — have flourished, and long may they flourish 

 in Canada ; nor has thj middle-age of mental vigour, and intel- 

 lectual exertion been tardy in succeeding to that first stage of 

 advancement. It would even be well if no premature signs of 

 undue prominence in the last of the three, already portended, like 

 early grey hairs, the decay of a ripe and vigorous manhood. 

 Canada has made a proafress so surprizing in all that promotes, 

 and in all that indicates, the well-being of a people : the dream 

 of yesterday has become so often the reality of to-day, that did 

 we not know how genial is the soil in which tliis prosperity is 

 rooted, how healthy the growth which no Piwtolus fostere but 

 fevers, with its golden streams ; no perpetual summer forces but 

 withers ; we might doubt whether it could long endure without 

 those checks which in other communities have usually occurred, 

 to throw them back in the race after wealth, and fallow as it 

 were the ground which over-production has exhausted. It is not 

 our intention then to dwell on a theme familiar to most of our 

 readers ; they need not be reminded by us that the generation 

 has not yet passed away whicli found in U'pper Canada a wilder- 

 ness, -where it leaves a garden ; before whose steps, as by an 

 enchanter's wand, roads have opened out, and stately edifices 

 arisen, and abodes of elegance and comfort scattered themselves 

 far and wide, if or need they he told that the beuificent Fairy 

 whose gifts the.se are, yet dwells among us, and by her names of 

 Industry and Order, and Peace, may yet be invoked for other 

 gifts, and won to carry her blessings to regions beyond their 

 present boundary. Material prosperity never fails to develope 

 in a community, and indeed requires for its creation a high 

 degree of intellectual exercise. Commercial enterprise, political 

 rivalry, the daily business of the advocate, the daily duty of the 

 physician, all task faculties which in the quiet paths of learning 

 or philosophy, might rear a monument of human wisdom, or 

 win new planets from the abyss. They task, but they do not 

 satisfy them ; that they exist, is a fact to which we appeal as a 

 jiTOof that the middle-age of our state has arrived ; that they do 

 more than exist, that they absorb so greatly those faculties whose 

 aim should be higher than the material interests of a day, or a 

 generation, is another fact to which we appeal, in proof that the 

 time has come when lettere must urge their claim to a better 

 representation, on peril of the place which is their birthright. 



When Europe awoke from its long sleep in the thirteenth 

 centur}', and in Italy and in France, in England and in Spain, 

 gave the first tokens of dawning civilization, by the foundation 

 Vol. I, No. 1, August, 1852. 



Of those univei-sities and colleges, which to the number of sixteen 

 or seventeen, date their origin from that iron-clad age, the truth 

 that association is the guardian of literature, that the concentration 

 of knowledge is the best preservative of its influence, au'.l the 

 best stimulus to its extension, appears to have been first readmit- 

 ted, after ages of oblivion, to its due place in the framework of 

 human society. It is impossible not to recognize at once a proof 

 the possession which that discovery took of the minds of men, and 

 of the wide diftusion of a desire to cultivate learning, in the fact 

 that Europe, thinly peopled as she wa.s, could boast of nearly 

 sixty univei-sities before the close of the fifteenth century. Those 

 were the day.s, liowever, when society, still in its infancy, was 

 under tutoi-s and governoi-s; before the veil of blind reliance, or 

 implicit faith, in the wisdom of one or two great minds had been 

 raised from those of their fellow men. Reason then neglected 

 the principal field of modern science, thase facts of which we can 

 take cognizance by our senses, and the relations we can establish 

 by experience between them, to build upon foundations as unsta- 

 ble as a quicksand, and to waste prodigious strength upon 

 subtilties which vanished like a film of gossamer in the grasp. 

 The consequence was a long delay in that acquaintance with the 

 bounteous and varied resources of the material world, which is 

 the reward of subsequent .study of its laws and phenomena. 

 Men were not -ivanting who, like our own Roger Bacon, were 

 prematurely enlightened, but debarred from sympath}-, ,and too 

 divided for co-operation, while they have indeed left to posterity 

 the shadow of a great name ; to their own generation and those 

 which immediately succeeded, they were but as light to one who 

 is without organs of vision, or wings to one who is chained to the 

 earth. It was in Italy, and in the latter half of the sixteenth 

 century, that the truth which had been so long practically recog- 

 nized in respect to literature, was fii-st applied to matters of science ; 

 and if association were indeed the guardian of the one, it has 

 ever since been the very life of the other. The Academy of the 

 « Secrets of Nature" founded, (how are the mighty fallen !) at 

 Naples, the present seat of all intolerance and restriction, in the 

 year 1560, was the forerunner of those numerous enlightened 

 bodies, which in every country of Europe were about to be 

 drawn together by kindred impulses, and by a common want; 

 and whicli were destined by the spirit of free enquiry which 

 animated them, to aid that emancipation from the bondage of 

 tradition, wdiich was dawning in philosophy, as it had already 

 dawned in religion. There was a boundless field before them. 

 If long afterwards, the grcatet of philosophei-s could liken him- 

 ,self to a child gathering a few bright pebbles by the shore of the 

 ocean, who can exaggerate the exhaustless novelty, the wondc'-, 

 of natuie's works, to ardent minds in which love for her beauties 



