This monograph on the intellectual development of the Dominion was delivered in substance as the presidential address to the Royal Society of Canada at its May meeting of 1893, in Ottawa. Since then the author has given the whole subject a careful revision, and added a number of bibliographical and other literary notes which could not conveniently appear in the text of the address, but are likely to interest those who wish tonfollow more closely the progress of culture in a country still struggling with the difficulties of the material development of half a continent. This little volume, as the title page shows, is intended as the commencement of a series of historical and other essays which will be periodically reproduced, in this more convenient form for the general reader, from the large quarto volumes of the Royal Society of Canada, where they first appear.