in an eminent degree to the diffusion of knowledge among the classes for whose benefit they are designed. The lectures delivered in connection with these institutes, during the winter season, and to which the public are admitted, embracing a great variety of subjects, literary, scientific, and historical, are usually well attended, and prove an attractive source of rational enjoyment. Mercantile Library Associations have been formed in Quebec and Montreal, and have been productive of great benefit.

The Historical Society of Quebec, founded in 1824, under the auspices of Earl Dalhousie, is the only institution of the kind in Canada. Three volumes of its transactions have been published, containing much curious information. Besides its library, rich in historical lore, the society possesses some very valuable manuscript documents, relating to the history of Canada.

The Natural History Society of Montreal, established in 1826, has a good library, furnished with the best scientific works, and an extensive museum. The mineralogical and botanical collections are remarkably fine; there is scarcely anything equal to them in North America. The stuffed specimens of the beasts and birds of Canda include nearly all the species peculiar to this province. A course of lectures is delivered before this society every winter; but we have not heard that it has promoted the advancement of science by original investigations or the publication of papers or transactions. Scientific research, we apprehend, is not valued as it ought to be in either section of the province.

A meteorological register is kept at Montreal, and there is a magnetical observatory, maintained by Government, at Toronto. Their monthly reports are regularly published in the British American Medical and Physical Journala very meritorious publication.

The number of volumes in the libraries of the undermentioned Institutions is thus reported:

Quebec Mechanics' Institute (founded 1830), 100 members

2,000

There was a library of great extent and value belonging to the Parliament of Canada, but Montreal barbarians burned it. The loss is in many respects irreparable.

Canada is far in advance of the mother country in reference to the number and circulation of its newspapers. With a population of 1,500,000, it has, during the summer months, seven daily journals-two in Quebec, three in Montreal, one in Kingston, and one in Toronto -(there will be two more in Montreal next summer)-while the number of tri-weekly, semiweekly, and weekly papers published in different parts of the province, amounts to upwards of eighty. This is a very gratifying fact, as it indicates an extensive reading population. Monthly periodicals are as yet but few, but they are respectably conducted.

IV. AGRICULTURE AND COMMERCE.

Great encouragement has been wisely afforded by the Legislature to the agricultural interest. The pecuniary grants during the past year amounted to £11,200, equally divided between Upper and Lower Canada, and then distributed among the county agricultural societies, to be added to local subscriptions; thus forming a fund from which the premiums to successful competitors at the agricultural shows are paid.

The annual exhibition of the provincial agricultural association in Upper Canada is an occasion of great interest, bringing together agriculturists from all parts of the province, and presenting most satisfactory proof of Canadian industry, ingenuity, and perseverance.

We anticipate very beneficial results from the establishment of a professorship of agriculture in the University of Toronto, which is shortly to take place.

Such is a summary of the facts of the subject, which require no commentary; it will thus be seen that Canada is in a very advanced state of civilization, and that Englishmen in repairing thither are not, by any means, plunged into an abyss of Barbarism. It is a fine country, and ultimately destined to constitute a great and glorious kingdom.

Most of our readers are aware that a change has lately taken place in the Presidency of Cheshunt College; Dr.

Harris has been removed to the new establishment in London, and Dr. Stowell, late of Rotheram, has taken his place.

Dr.

There could not have been a better, or a more satisfactory appointment. Stowell is richly endowed with all the attainments, gifts, and graces, which the office requires. No previous occupant ever entered upon the function with the

same amount of preparation for its efficient discharge. However able and excellent, they all laboured under the defect of inexperience in matters of tuition; and therefore had to make their way through toil and time. They had all simply been pastors; Dr. Stowell, on the contrary, has had the advantage of a twofold experience. He was first a pastor solely, and then a tutor and pastor; and in these successive labours he has spent his days till he has reached his matured prime; and thus equipped for his work, he has been called to his present office,an office to the duties of which he is in all respects much more than equal.

Cheshunt College, for a number of years, has been an object of interest such as never previously attached to it, from the Presidency of Dr. Harris. That eminent individual reflected upon it the lustre of his genius, and shared with it his merited renown. In thus speaking, we are far from overlooking or undervaluing the able and excellent men who were his coadjutors; we thus speak of him as bearing the chief burden: he occupied the most conspicuous place, and to him, therefore, the public eye was specially directed. To follow such a man would have been to most a matter of some solicitude; knowledge, however, is power, and conscious power begets calm confidence; but the number of men to whom, in proper measure, this power belongs, is not great, and of that number a first place unquestionably belongs to Dr. Stowell. But Dr. Stowell has not only had a previous pastoral and professional experience; he has also taken a place of high respectability as a writer and an author, and as such is advantageously known to the Nonconformist body of these realms.

We have been led to this train of reflection by the Address of Dr. Stowell, on his entrance on academic duties, now before us. We have read that address

with a high degree of satisfaction, as, we doubt not, have all who are interested in the progress of Cheshunt College. Notwithstanding the discourse is in the hands of the public, it will through our columns reach tens of thousands that would not otherwise see it; and we conceive an object is always gained in bringing and keeping our College Institutions in the eye of the public, and in thus furnishing them with an accurate notion of what is

being done. We shall first, then, ex

tract the Doctor's own account of

THE COURSE OF STUDY.

"It is my intention to deliver to you separate courses of written Lectures-on the Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, and Language, on the Literature, Criticism, and Interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, and on the principles of the Christian Theology: founding on each lecture an oral examination, and requiring, at brief intervals, written answers to questions based on as many lectures as belong to a distinct theme.

"Besides these lectures, the classes will be expected to analyze separate treatises in specific departments of Theology, in Church History, Logic, Rhetoric, General Grammar, Homiletics, Pastoral Biography, and the experimental, devotional, and practical parts of Religion.

"The study of the Greek and Latin Fathers will occupy portions of the time of the more advanced students. The Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac languages will be taught, and the peculiarities of the Greek used by the Evangelists and Apostles will be developed, for the better understanding of the Old and New Testaments, in which critical and exegetical readings will be systematically carried on.

"There will also be a weekly exercise, bearing directly on the practical work of preaching and conducting public worship, considered as an art to be improved by cultivation.

"To this work it is my purpose to dedicate myself, as wisely, calmly, and ardently as God may enable me; endeavouring, at all times, to cherish in my own heart, and in yours, the spirit of intelligent, manly, self-governing, and catholic piety.

"It will be a great personal happiness to me, dear brethren, if you will regard me not as your teacher only, but as your friend, sympathizing with you in your mental or spiritual struggles, and heartily rejoicing in your success as members of this College, and, afterwards, as ministers of the Gospel."

After this most comprehensive outline, Dr. Stowell proceeds to expatiate somewhat in detail on the plans which are pursued in the Academic course, reminding the Students that the facilities for mental culture that are afforded them are of incalculable worth to themselves as men, and auxiliary to their spiritual progress as Christians. Here, as was meet, Dr. Stowell is very explicit on the subject of personal piety, intimating that all

attainments in the absence of this will go for little, and that this is endangered by scholastic pursuits, which renders it the more necessary for all concerned to keep perpetually in view the one thing needful. After these excellent observations, the Doctor proceeds to remark on the subject of preaching, as follows:

PREACHING.

"As preachers, you will be made to feel continually that your preparatory culture, however careful and prolonged, has been too slight and brief. To present the Gospel-as it is-to men of varied ages, dispositions, and powers of intelligence, with freshness and with energy, with simplicity and wisdom, is a work which stands before my mind much more vividly this day than it did thirty years ago, as one demanding the most elaborate preparation of the strongest and the holiest men. The preacher of the Gospel is to be known in society as an able and well furnished man: he is expected to be, at least, equal to other professional persons; to take his place among the well educated; to be a guiding spirit; to understand things; to know human nature; to be familiar with sciences, literatures, philosophies; and, above all, to be a good divine, of courteous manners, and honourable principles; a living model of rectitude, amenity, and prudence. Happy is that youth who has been nurtured, from the beginning, in the best of colleges,-the alma mater of his home; into the texture of whose moral perceptions the love of truth and virtue has been woven by parental love; and all whose talents have been developed under the harmonizing power of grace. When such a youth is dedicated to the service of the Gospel, the grasp of early habits will be duly felt in the moulding of his character; and the mightier grasp of infinite love will strengthen him in his conflicts with spiritual evil, and his aspirations after spiritual good. By him the advantages of intellectual and religious discipline at college will be gratefully appreciated; and their full power will be seen in the simplicity, ardour, and consistency of his public labours. Even when a student enters the hall of learning as a candidate for the ministry, without that previous training which no words of mine can worthily describe, the work of collegepreparation, which is in some degree the care of others, but in a far higher degree his own, becomes all the more respon

sible, since it is required for engrafting habitudes which have been sinfully neglected in the season which Providence ordains for planting them. All experience proves the soundness of the maxim -that for every great work a man must be greatly prepared, and that the preparation must come as near as the case admits to the work he has to do."

There is much sagacity in this admirable passage; it is full of practical wisdom. It is impossible to reiterate with too much earnestness and vehemence the importance of preparation, whether as it respects the individual himself, or the Church over which he is to preside. Not only does such preparation enable a man to perform a vastly increased amount of work, but to do it better, more easily, and more efficiently.

We are exceedingly pleased with the vast prominence which is given by Dr. Stowell to pastoral accomplishments; be presses it with great emphasis on his auditory, that it is of infinitely higher moment that they should be powerful preachers, than that they should become accomplished scholars. This is wisdom, and we trust it will never be forgotten in our Academic Establishments. The great want of the times,—as it ever has been, and will be of all times,-is efficient pulpit ministration. We are far from setting light by literature,-this is not the day for that; but let us have light combined with heat; knowledge with the power of communication. We would say, let all our youthful aspirants to pulpit labour, now in Academic bowers, take the sun for their model; let them combine light with heat; let prudence regulate zeal, and let zeal animate prudence; let us have erudition, let us have eloquence, let us have the invaluable power of making things plain-simplicity of object, purity of character, and an entire consecration of heart and soul to the advancement of the glory of Christ! We have not been without our solicitude ever since the connection of our Dissenting Colleges with the London University. Viewed through a scholarly medium, the arrangement was a desirable one; and for the purpose of facilitating classical scholarship it may be useful; but it is fraught with imminent peril. A young man of even limited powers, if he set his heart on Degrees, and devote himself exclusively to specific study, may, in the end, succeed, but it will be at the expense of sacrificing everything else; and

hence, when he has attained his object, his mind, for all pastoral purposes, is a perfect blank! But let all such be well assured that a B.A. or an M.A., when he goes forth to the arena of active life, and pastoral toil, will find that these accomplishments will be of very little service to him. It is a fact confirmed by the experience of Universities, that Academic stars, when the course is over, generally become opaque bodies, they are no more heard of. Edmund Burke himself made but a subordinate figure, and occupied only a secondary place at the University of Dublin. He never obtained a prize, just because he never sought one. At the moment when much inferior men, by confining themselves to pursuits purely classical or scientific, were gaining prizes, he was gathering in stores from every section of the Encyclopedia, and at that very time constructing a refutation of the philosophy of Berkeley and of Hume! What was the result? In after life the prize-takers all passed from the public view, and Edmund Burke stood forth, shining as a star of the first magnitude, or rather blazing as an intellectual sun. So far as our own experience has gone, scarcely one of the principal prize-men have ever been heard of since they turned their backs on the college gates. This was fully anticipated even by their superior compeers, who daily saw their inferiority as men, and the comparative smallness of their intellectual stature.

We

have known incomparably the first men in a class never once enter into the ranks of prize contention through the whole of their curriculum. This limited species of pursuit had no glory for them; they aimed at something higher. Their ambition was general culture and extended knowledge. Alexander refused to run in the Olympian games on the ground of the inferior character of the combatants, proudly saying, "I will run with kings for my competitors,-with none other." We would commend to young men the profound observation of Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets. "You may be with a man for a life-time before you have occasion to ascertain his knowledge in hydrostatics and astronomy; but his moral and prudential knowledge immediately appears ;" and then he goes on to point out the means whereby the stores of this knowledge is to be acquired. So with all young men preparing for the ministry. Let the culture of the heart and the head be carried on contemporaneously. Acquire knowledge and the power

of communicating knowledge, but let the end always regulate the means.

But we must pass on to the views of Dr. Stowell on

THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY.

"The study of Theology being as really an intellectual occupation as any other study, the end is truth; the means are documents, evidences, correct interpretations, and sober reasonings; the evils to be avoided are, rashness, servility, prejudice, and self-conceit; the temper to be cherished is, a modest and persevering love of truth, as truth, so far as it has been, or may be, ascertained. You cannot study with success otherwise than by the practical application of those principles which reason has demonstrated, or which experience has tested, as essential to success in every department of mental exertion. But Theology being a science differing in most important respects from every other, its prosecution must require in the student, besides the qualifications common to all studies, dispositions and the appliance of principles appropriate to itself.

"Endeavour to keep before you a comprehensive view of the analogy between Theological truth and the truth acquired in every other department of science. Science is exact knowledge reduced to principles, and arranged according to a logical method. Each particular science affords only a portion of that knowledge which is entire in the mind of God. In all the sciences united there is the harmony of universal truth; and the pursuits of each contribute to the completeness and illustration of the rest. In a most important sense, Theology is regarded as one of the sciences, and that one to which all the others, even philosophically considered, are subservient. All that respects the forces acting on matter, the motions of bodies, the structure of the earth, the laws of light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, the affinities of chemistry, the principles of acoustics, the unities and varieties of physiology, the mental, moral, or political phenomena of human nature, and even the abstract relations of quantity, is strictly analogous with Theology; and that philosophy is imperfect indeed which fails, by the noblest efforts of intellect, to demonstrate, as Sir Isaac Newton does, those primary truths on which Theology is built.

"By taking this view of the analogy to which I refer, you will find the true

dignity of all science. Instead of ignorantly judging that any truth can be opposed to Theology, or even unconnected with it, you will perceive that the more you really know on other subjects, the higher will be your vantage-ground for Theological studies, the wider will be your field of mental vision, and the more braced and disciplined your faculties will be for appreciating and for mastering the difficulties which Theology presents. Another advantage attending this view of the analogy now pointed out will be, the argument afforded on behalf of a calm, resolute, and persistent course of reading in connection with Theology. Comprehending, as it may, every other kind of study, and transcending all others, as it must, in the grandeur and permanence of its results, it cannot but claim from you the unwearied labour of your mind, in its best condition. And, in the prosecution of that labour, you will discover that the same patience, the same steady investigation of facts, the same submission to evidence, the same avoidance of speculation, the same cautious induction of principles and evolution of laws, are required in Theology as in other walks of learning, but required in a more eminent degree, as this study is beyond comparison the highest, and because mistakes in this are the most fatal, not to you only, but to those to whom they might be imparted by your teaching, or confirmed by your example.

"The specific difference between Theology and other sciences is equally deserving of your attention. The means by which you may escape error in the lower stages of your progress will not, of themselves, avail you here. The doctrines of Theology have, in common with all truths, to encounter the foregone conclusions of age, country, associations, habits, tastes, and interests: but, in addition to these, they have to encounter the opposition of the corrupt heart to the manifest purpose for which these doctrines are revealed; the presumption that supposes men to be already in possession of the facts and principles from which sound Theological deductions can be drawn ; inaptitude to spiritual perception; the intellectual arrogance which throws away, or, like Alexander, cuts the knots it cannot solve; the self-confidence which revolts from what is humiliating or condemning; and the worldly-mindedness, levity, or ambition, which spreads over the mind like an earthly fog, shutting out the light of heaven."

Dr. Stowell then proceeds to enforce the accompaniment of the study of theology with special exercises of devotion. His views on this part of the subject are admirable. Let us hear him :

"You are prepared for being reminded, in conclusion, That the studies of Theology should be invariably accompanied with special exercises of devotion. We need such exercises to fortify us against the seductions which experience has felt in this, as in other occupations of the intellect; to protect the heart. from the chilling influence of mere criticism and hard reasoning; to subdue the propensity to speculate and to presume; to remind us of our fallibility; to inspire us with the simplicity and seriousness with which religious truth is to be sought; to preserve the remembrance of the peculiar character of such studies, as well as the mental dispositions appropriate to them; and to aid us in making our most abstruse, or our most alluring studies, subserve our own spiritual advancement.

"There is another reason, and it is the highest, why devotional acts should accompany the study of Theology. We need to be taught and guided by the Spirit of Truth. When we find Socrates and Plato, Xenophon, Cicero and Seneca, and other men who were the lights of Greece and Rome, ascribing virtue to a divine guidance, it would be strange if a revelation from heaven contained no promise of that guidance. This, in truth, is the great theme of revealed promise. The fulfilment of the promise is the marking feature of the Christian dispensation. Thus to have the mental vision purged, the prepossessions of the heart brought down, and the whole economy of our inmost nature harmonized with the mind of the Spirit, is a boon too precious to be slighted by the conscientious student of Theology. cannot have it without the holy abstraction, the spiritual contemplation, the earnest desires, which seek utterance in prayer.

We

"There is no occasion to speak disparagingly of the application of our own powers to Theological inquiries, with a view to augment our feeling of dependence on our unseen and infallible Teacher; for I am fully convinced that the practical conviction of our dependence is strongest when the direction of our best powers to the investigations of Theology is most vigorous. The deepest thinkers, the keenest reasoners, and some of the most elegant interpreters