and leased on a royalty system to mining companies. The province gets half its revenue in this way. There is no direct taxation for provincial purposes. It keeps up roads, bridges, etc., and thus lightens municipal taxation. The value of the coal-production exceeds $50,000,000. The Cape Breton mines are the largest producers, and have built up the port of Sydney, the population of which has quadrupled in ten years (now 10,000).
Education. Nova Scotia is especially proud of her free, public-school system, which is open to the children of all the people. In each of the 18 counties a high school or academy carries on the work of the public school to a higher plane, and universities carry the work still further and crown the educational structure. There also is a provincial normal school at Truro. Dalhousie College and the University (undenominational) are at Halifax. The University of King’s College at Windsor is Anglican, and that of Acadia College at Wolfville is Baptist. St. Francis Xavier College at Antigonish and St. Anne’s College at Digby are Roman Catholic. There are a Presbyterian Theological College at Halifax, a school for the blind and one for the deaf and dumb.
Halifax port is open all the year round and is the terminus of the Intercolonial Railway.
No′va Zem′bla, an archipelago and two islands in the Arctic Ocean, attached to the Archangel government of northern Russia, lying between Kara and Barents Seas. It is about 600 miles long and 80 wide, almost cut into two narrow strips by the sea-passage of Matochkin Shar. Nothing is known of the interior, and it is only visited by Russians and Norwegians to capture sea-fowl, seal, whale, walrus and dolphin. The country was known to the Novgorod hunters in the 11th century, and was rediscovered by Sir Hugh Willoughby in 1553, and has since that time afforded much search and interest. Much has of late been learned of the country, which may be said to be uninhabited since 1868, save for a small colony of Russian and Samoyedes, who subsist by hunting and fishing. The Russian name for the archipelago is Novaya Zemlya.
Novel, The. The novel is the most flexible and inclusive of modern literary forms. It may be said to have begun in Spain with Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1604), which replaced the unreal and misleading romances of chivalry with a fidelity to history, scenery, life and manners and with a hurmor, pathos and wisdom which make it one of the great books of the world. Le Sage inaugurated the same tradition in France, directing it in his Gil Blas (1715), especially to circumstances and manners.
The English novel began with Richardson’s Pamela (1740), a minute analysis of middle-class circumstances; with Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), a sympathetic and candid history of the experiences of an ordinary man; with Sterne’s brilliant, witty and sentimental Tristram Shandy (1760); and with Smollett’s lively and humorous adventures of Humphrey Clinker (1771). In the early 19th century Jane Austen perfected Richardson’s fidelity to the truth of daily life; and Scott inaugurated the counter-tendency of the historical romance. In this he was followed by Dumas and Hugo in France, where Balzac and others followed Smollett. Tolstoy in Russia and contemporary Spanish and Italian novelists have developed the method of Richardson. In the later 19th century in England Dickens revived the manner of Smollett, treating peculiarities and extravagances with extraordinary liveliness and humor and with a humanitarian intension to show the interest and worth of the common man. Thackeray followed Fielding in fidelity and sincerity, adding the element of benevolent social satire. George Eliot added a new depth of emotion to the observation and sympathy of Richardson.
In the United States Cooper, under the influence of Scott, recorded the life of the Indian and the frontiersman, and in The Pilot inaugurated the sea-novel; while Hawthorne in three great romances pictured the inner life of the Puritan past in New England. Present tendencies are well-illustrated by the elaboration of national and social traits by Henry James and the study of sectional and economic differences by Mr. Howells. James aims to produce an illusion of reality by the artistic presentation of personal impressions of “the human spectacle.” Howells seeks to present the actual and the commonplace as a source of social knowledge and moral obligation. Many contemporary novels follow the latter “realistic” theory; being devoted to business, labor and social conditions, problems and remedies. Perhaps the larger number follow the theory and practice of Marion Crawford, who considers the novel an intellectual, artistic luxury; its prime object being to provide interesting or amusing relaxation and recreation; although incidentally it may cultivate right feeling or exhibit characters and actions worthy to be desired or imitated.
The short-story, as it prevails to-day, is a development of the 19th century. Brief tales, of course, have existed from the earlier times. But it remained for Poe to show that a story short enough to be read at a sitting would be more successful if it had the completeness of impression resulting from unity of theme, harmony of parts, selection of detail and compression in expression. This strict conception of the form developed in France at almost the same time. Robert Louis Stevenson made it popular in England considerably later. Since Irving, Poe and Hawthorne the short-story has flour-
