vate inquirer. Without throwing any slur upon the public bodies, or the still more anomalous bodies half public, half private, in whose keeping some of our most valuable records remain, it is undeniable that a Government Board has means of access to materials which are not always at the command of a private individual or a private association.

It is therefore our firm conviction, that if the Government of every country is bound to establish some body, (large or small, we care not,) for the purposes in question, the Government of this country is more especially called upon so to do; and this we assert the more boldly, because successive ministries, Tory and Whig, have recognised and acted upon this conviction. The only point which seems to involve any doubt, is the composition of such a body. To this point we therefore address ourselves; and it shall be our object to show, in as few words as possible, how such a body may be constituted so as to couple effectiveness in action with simplicity of machinery.

The first and most important condition of success is, that the employés, who know what is required to be done, should not be shackled by the pretensions and the mischievous meddling of those who do not. Our Board must therefore consist of working men, and working men only. Till they are free from the impertinent intrusion of those who wear blue ribands or red ribands of literature, they can never execute what the country has a right to require at their hands.

The next condition is, that there should not be a single person admitted on such a Board, except on condition of receiving a salary to be regularly brought before the House of Commons in the quarterly accounts. Without this, there is no responsibility. Parliament can never be so ungracious as to look closely into the proceedings of those who give their services gratuitously, and in a direction which by no means lies within the limits of any public or private duty; but Parliament both may and will ask, whether a salaried functionary performs the duties attached to his appointment. By this we understand also, that no person should form a part of such body who is not bona fide engaged in preparing such works for the press as fall within the compass of the Board's objects. Our readers will easily perceive that our efforts are directed

to the getting rid of that pernicious patronage which is always exercised by irresponsible and unpaid commissioners; by means of which the most shameless jobbing is set on foot and perpetuated; which necessarily leads to a gross waste of public money, and to the undertaking of works useless in themselves, and ridiculous in the eyes of all learned Europe. And as a body of men all actually interested in the work of publication would, in its very nature, offer nearly a perfect guarantee against any undue preference of one man or one subject, so we would make that guarantee still more complete, by subjecting every one of their undertakings to the approval of the minister to whose department the Board might properly belong, whether, for example, to the Treasury or the Home Office, or whatever it might be; for, unfortunately, we have little reason to hope for the establishment of the ministry to which it would properly belong, namely, a Ministry of Public Instruction.

We propose that this body should be permanent, but not the individuals who compose it; their commission must be made renewable from time to time, to ensure strict attention to the duties which they undertake. But till the mass of historical records is made available for public uses, Government must pledge itself to keep the body on foot, for the purpose of ensuring a succession of persons proper to be employed in the task.

We do not mean to enter upon any details respecting the internal economy of our Board; its numbers, its immediate mode of action, and all such minor points being readily settled, when once the principle upon which it must be constructed is fairly understood: but we are well satisfied, when we look around us and sum up those who have proved their capacity to become members of such a body, that there would be no difficulty in finding proper instruments.

Nor is this the place to enter upon a detailed examination of the expense which might probably be entailed upon the country by our plan. It is enough to say, that a far smaller sum would suffice than has for many years been most unprofitably squandered upon objects similar in their nature; in short, that a Board of six persons, with an allowance of five thousand pounds per annum, would have ample means to ef

fect something honourable both to themselves and the minister that established them.

The difference between our plan, and that which has been successfully pursued in Germany, is trifling. We have not, in our universities, a sufficient number of persons whose sole business it is to conduct historical inquiries, and found a school of historians; we have no laborious Benedictines, with their learned leisure, removed from, and independent of the wants and worry of everyday life; we have, finally, no society upon whose permanence reliance can be placed, and which is sure to be continually recruited from among the educated classes of the community; it is therefore to a Board of Archivists that we commit the task. The support and patronage of Government are necessary elements both in France, in Germany and in England; and this, given there, we claim here also.

The national character and peculiar education of Englishmen, not less than the circumstances of society, secure us against the evils which we believe to be inherent in the German system. There is no fear of our ever becoming mere bookworms. We run no danger of falling asleep while the echoes from our political and religious shocks are so loud. But another and as great a danger we do run; the danger, namely, of entirely forgetting the past in the present, and in our admiration of the flower and the leaf, neglecting the deepseated root from which they sprung and have their sustenance.

Ours is no country of mushroom institutions; the past lives on, and breathes in every ordinance of the present, furnishing that broad basis upon which alone change becomes safe, and progress sure. But the lines grow dim in the long lapse of centuries; and were they not, from time to time, sharpened and renewed by the hand of some self-denying enthusiast, we might at last cease to recognise and to revere them. It is that this renewal may be accomplished with skill and certainty, that it may be left no longer to the precarious decision of chance, that we put forward our earnest appeal to the Government of this country, entreating them to furnish us with the opportunity and the means of entering upon a career in which we may outstrip those foreign competitors who now look back in scorn or pity upon us, lagging in the race.

ARTICLE VI.

Lower Canada.

It is difficult, within the limits of a Review, to touch upon the Canadian question, in a manner satisfactory to those who are acquainted with the country, and intelligible to that larger portion of the community to whom Canada is emphatically a terra incognita, not only in its physical developments, but in its social and political relations. We feel this difficulty sensibly. Our earliest recollections are of a country where nature has traced on a gigantic scale the lineaments of a powerful empire; where a river, flowing from inland* seas, fed by numerous tributary streams, unrivalled in beauty, and almost unparalleled in extent and usefulness, sweeps for 2000+ miles through temperate latitudes, in a portion of the globe richly stored with mineral wealth, and marked by every diversity of climate that prevails between Sweden and central France,-where, in fact, Providence seems to have decreed that man shall reap an ample return

*The word "Sea" means, in common parlance, a body of salt not of fresh water; it is, therefore, somewhat incorrectly applied to the Canadian Lakes. The word "Lake," however, would be equally incorrect, and would fail to convey a just idea of the extent of these "inland seas." Lake Superior is unequalled in magnitude by any collection of fresh-water upon the globe. Its length, measured on a curve line through the centre, is about three hundred and sixty geographical miles; its extreme breadth one hundred and forty; and its circumference, following the sinuosities of its coasts, about one thousand five hundred. Its surface is about six hundred and twenty-seven feet above the tide-water of the Atlantic. Various soundings have been taken from eighty to one hundred and fifty fathoms, but its extreme depth probably exceeds two hundred fathoms, thus showing the bottom of the lake to be nearly six hundred feet below the level of the ocean. Lake Huron is only second to Lake Superior. Lake Erie is about 265 miles long, 63 wide at its centre, and 658 miles in circumference; its greatest depth varies from 40 to 45 fathoms. Lake Ontario is elliptical in its shape, 172 miles long, 594 at its extreme breadth, and about 467 miles in circumference. The depth varies very much, but is seldom less than 3 or more than 50 fathoms, except in the middle, where attempts have been made with 300 fathoms without striking soundings.-Bouchette's British Dominions in America.

†The source of the river St. Lewis, which may be deemed the remotest spring of the St. Lawrence, is in latitude 48° 30′ N. and about 93° W. longitude. From its source, the general direction of the St. Lawrence, through Lakes Superior and Huron, is south-east to Lake Erie,-which lies between 41° 30′ and 42° 52′ N. latitude,―nearly due east through that lake, and then north-cast to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, through which its waters are mingled with the Atlantic ocean, after a course of upwards of 2000 statute miles. Ships of 600 tons burthen can ascend with very little difficulty to Montreal, which is 580 miles from the Gulf.-Bouchette's British Dominions in America.

VOL. VII.-No XIII.

for his industry, unless man himself shall mar the beneficent intentions of Providence.

In later years these early impressions have been somewhat rudely assailed, by hearing this portion of the Empire referred to as a few acres of snow in Canada*, where now, as in the days of Goldsmith,

"Wild Oswego spreads her swamps around,

And Niagara stuns with thundering sound."

* The accounts given of the climate of Quebec and the French settlements in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, after the conquest in 1759, are even at this day generally received as applicable to the whole of the country known by the name of Canada; whereas they are now scarcely applicable even to the parts which they then described;-it being a well-established fact, that the climate of America is rapidly changing with the clearing of the forests.-The Canadas as they are.

At Quebec, in lat. 46° 48′ 49′′ N., the orchards yield apples and pears of very superior flavour. At Montreal, in lat. 45° 30′ N., grapes are matured to great excellence, and peaches with care also arrive at perfection. At York, in lat. 43° 43′ N., and in the Niagara and western districts of Upper Canada, still further south, all these fruits are found in the greatest luxuriance. The peach, the nectarine, and the grape seem here to have found their native soil, and are produced in the richest profusion. In Lower Canada the winter commences about the 25th of November in the regions about Quebec, and it may be said to last till the 25th of April, when agricultural operations are resumed. In the district of Montreal the permanent cold generally sets in a fortnight later, and the spring is earlier. In Upper Canada the winter is considerably shorter; and the snow, which in Lower Canada covers the ground for five consecutive months, scarcely lies for two in the upper province.-Bouchette's British Dominions in America.

Humboldt has endeavoured to connect the system of climates of the Old World with that of the New, by fixing at every ten degrees of latitude, under different meridians, a small number of places, whose mean temperature has been correctly ascertained, and through these, as so many standard points, supposing lines of equal heat, or isothermal lines, to pass. The observations which have been made on the temperature of places in the Eastern and Western Continents, show, that advancing seventy degrees to the east or west, a sensible alteration in the heat of the atmosphere is found. Places situated in the same latitudes in America and Europe, do not, however, differ so many degrees as has been generally supposed. The direction of these lines of equal heat, for the two systems of temperature known by precise observation, viz. that of the middle and West of Europe, and that of the East of America, gives the following differences :

In tracing the directions of isothermal lines, from Europe to the Atlantic countries of the New World, they are found to have the character of parallelism towards the South, and to converge towards the North. The whole of Europe, compared with the eastern parts of America, has, in fact, an insular climate; and, although the annual fall of rain in the United States of America has been es