RESOURCES OF THE DOMINION. 5 build thousands of fleets and warm the hearths of many generations. Already great as a wheat-growing country, it is destined to be greater, the isotherm of wheat running right across the greater portion of the whole Dominion. The red loam of Prince Edward is among the most fertile of soils. What country is so beautifully wooded and watered as New Brunswick, whose fertility is only surpassed by the wealth of its mines and fisheries? Nova Scotia, variegated by lofty hills and broad valleys, by lakes and rivers, is rich in geological resources, and, while bountiful to the agriculturalist, is still more bountiful to the miner. Gold and iron and copper, lead and silver and tin, abound. Shipbuilding is carried on extensively, as in New Brunswick and in Quebec. The agricultural resources of Quebec and those of Ontario need not be dwelt on. It is now known that the land to the northwest of Manitoba is richer than any prairie land in the world. Our minerals held their heads high at the Centennial of 1876. Canadian horses and cattle are finding a market in England, and the gates of commerce are thrown open to us under the Southern Cross. If the eastern bounds of our Dominion, washed by the stormy Atlantic, are variously rich, so are the western bounds, whose golden feet are laved by the calmer waters of the Pacific. Destined at once to be the England and the California of the future, British Columbia is as beautiful as she is richly dowered. The traveller who proceeds up the highway made where the Fraser cleaves the granite ridges of the Cascade range and enters the open valleys beyond, is face to face with "the unequalled pastoral and agricultural resources of the bunch-grass country."* From an eminence in the neighbourhood of Kamloops he commands an interminable prospect of grazing lands and valleys waiting for the husbandman. He may see the mouths of the coal-pits opening into the hulls of the vessels; here, inexhaustible supplies of iron ore; there, the woodsman laying the axe to trees two hundred and fifty feet high and over four hundred years old. Skirting the Fraser, he will see the Indian fisherman haul out a salmon on the sands, whence the miner is sifting sparkling ore. In Cariboo, in Cassiar, in the valley of the Stickeen, the precious metal is still more abundant. * See Lord Dufferin's speech at Victoria, Sept. 20th, 1876. What land is more richly blessed by nature with water, whether we consider it as a beautifier, or as a drudge, or as a fishing field? The fisheries, inland and seaward, are unequalled. No country in the world has such an avenue of approach as the St. Lawrence. To wind one's way through the Thousand Islands is to wander amid enchanting beauty. It is an Irish poet who writes "There are miracles, which man, Cag'd in the bounds of Europe's pigmy span, What variety and beauty is there up Lake Superior! Cross the continent, and you may sail along the coast for a week in a vessel of two thousand tons, threading " an interminable labyrinth of watery lanes and reaches," winding endlessly amid a maze and mystery of islands, promontories, and peninsulas for thousands of miles, the placid water undisturbed by the slighest swell from the adjoining ocean, and presenting at every turn an ever-shifting combination of rock, verdure, forest, glacier, and snow-capped mountain of unrivalled grandeur and beauty."+ Those capacious and tranquil waters, capable of carrying a line of battle ship, seem gentle, as if on purpose to suit the frail canoes which skim in safety over the unrippled surface. In such a country, where the laws are equal, with everything which can stimulate industry,‡ everything which can stir the heart, it would be an extraordinary thing if the Irishman did not rise to a high level. Here, all that his fathers ever struggled for he has. He is a controlling part of the present; he is one of the architects of the future, and he has nothing to do with the disasters of the past, only so far as they teach him lessons for the present. Nothing to do with the glories of the past, save to catch their inspiration. On those disasters and those glories it will now be my duty briefly to dwell. * Moore. + Lord Dufferin. I am convinced, from what I saw in the States, and from all I have heard, that the position of the Irishman in Canada is better than in the States. No source of education open to a people ought to be so ruitful as the story of their own country. But, if it is to teach and correct and inspire, it must be true. The muse of history is the purest of all the Nine, and no passion should darken the clear blue of the intellectual atmosphere of her domain; no fiction warp its crisp outlines. The romancer, who gives you idle fables, and calls them history, would play a much more useful part if he appeared in his true character of novelist; while the man who distorts facts or colours them mischievously, with the view of raising or stimulating passions, is worse than a murderer, for he sows broadcast the seeds of murder. In uncritical times, the deposit of the national fancy is easily mistaken for the gold of truth, and for the most credulous of Irish historians there is this excuse for him the future was a vista of despair; the present, blood and tears, and hope, in the unnatural strain, was turned to the past, giving additional warmth and boldness to imagination. He erred, too, it must be admitted, in good company, but, in his case, error was fraught with serious consequences -it was used by the enemies of his country to discredit her real glory. Some Irish historians divide the history into periods; the pre-Christian, the Irish pentarchy, the Danish period, the Norman, the Tudor and Stuart, and the Hanoverian. But, perhaps, * See "The Student's Manual of Irish History." By M. F. Cusack. Until somebody does for Ireland what Mr. J. R. Green has done for England, I know no better book to recommend to those who want to get an outline of events. But, owing, perhaps, to the limits of space, very important facts, which should find a place even in a compendium, are omitted, and it is impossible to escape from the conviction that, here and there, the partiality of the patriot sways the balance of the historian-an unhappy thing, because calculated to make Irishmen look ridiculous, and a needless thing, for Irishmen can afford to have the truth told. But it is one of the best small histories of Ireland which can be got. * the facts would be brought more certainly before the mind if Irish history were divided into the Celtic period and the mixed period. The modern Irishman is not a Celt, any more than the modern Englishman is a Saxon. The name of the greatest of English historians proves him to have been in part Celt; the name of the latest of Irish historians † indicates that the writer is in part Norman. But, as in England, over Celt and Norman the Saxon predominates, so in Ireland, over Saxon and Norman, the Celt predominates. We may leave antiquarians to puzzle over the five "takings of Ireland. It is enough for every practical purpose to know as we do, by the sure test of language, that the people inhabiting Ireland, when the mists of unhistorical times are swept away from its green hills, its fertile valleys, and extensive forests, belonged to the great Celtic race. That race which came before the Teuton formed the vanguard of the Aryan march to the West and played, and still plays, a great part in the history of the world. It plays its part no longer alone, but in conjunction with one or other of its brethren. The Celt of Gaul has done great things, not merely within his own bounds, but for Europe; but he has wrought all this brilliancy speaking a Latin dialect and wearing the name of a German tribe. The Celt of Ireland of Scotia major, and his brethren among the hills of Scotia minor, having learned a language composed of elements drawn from dialects of their brethren, the Teuton on the one hand, and the Roman on the other, have done their part in building up what, if Irishmen's attention had not been directed into other Disfigured, as Froude's history is, by deliberate misrepresentation, his pages are the most vivid which have been devoted to Irish history, and the student could not do better than read them, if he will remember their real character and correct them by reference to more trustworthy sources bearing on the period. Mr. Goldwin Smith's essay, "Irish History and Irish Character," should be read by every student. It is the most masterly thing ever written on Ireland, and breathes, with one or two trifling exceptions, a spirit of perfect fairness. For persons who are not students of Irish history there is no other book which will give them, on a small canvas, so true a picture. The canvas is small, but the treatment is the large treatment of a master-hand. THE CELT IN EUROPE. channels, they would have readily and gladly recognised as the Brito-Hibernian empire. On this continent, working by the side of the Saxon, and mingling with him, the Celt has made, in a few years, one of the foremost of modern nations, and here, in Canada, no small portion of the work of the future rests on his shoulders. It is impossible to say with certainty whether the Celts separated from the Roman and the Greek in their Aryan nome, or parted company with them on their westward march. When we see them face to face with their classical brethren, it is as enemies. They poured over the Alps, and settled in the valleys of the Po, and, in vengeance for the haughty language of Roman ambassadors and some Gaulish blood spilt in a skirmish, they raised the siege of Clusium and marched on Rome, which, having put the Romans to rout at Allia, they gave to the flames. It was Celtic valour bore down the Roman in the defile of Thrasymene, on the disastrous field of Cannæ; nor was it until Cæsar carried a ten years' extirminating war into the home of the Celts that the contest of four centuries was decided. They carried their arms into Greece and overran Asia Minor. They sacked Delphi; "they met the summons of Alexander with gasconading defiance; they overthrew the phalanx in the plains of Macedon."* We may trust the traditions which assign an early date to the settlement of Ireland, while dismissing with a smile stories about Noah's children and Canaanitish emigrations. The Celt who settled in Ireland, separated by the sea from the continent, would naturally be shut out from a share in the wars and enterprises of the members of his race on the mainland, and be kept free from influences to which they were exposed. Centuries passed away, and the civilization did not advance beyond the primitive stage of the sept and clan. Petty principalities arose, and petty kingdoms, and population was kept down by constant wars. There is no use in attributing virtues to the Irish Celts at this stage which are inconsistent with the infancy of a people. What they were we can very easily understand from what we know certainly of themselves, from what we know of the Gauls, |