Toronto have each of them several daily papers, but, as far as I am aware, no paper openly professes republican or annexationist views, and some of the journals advocate in the strongest manner an attachment to British institutions. The prices of these papers vary from a penny to threepence each, and a workman would as soon think of depriving himself of his breakfast as of his morning journal. It is stated that thousands of the subscribers to the newspapers are so illiterate as to depend upon their children for a knowledge of their contents. At present few people, comparatively speaking, are more than half educated. The knowledge of this fact lowers the tone of the press, and circumscribes both authors and speakers, as any allusions to history or general literature would be very imperfectly, at all, understood.
The merchants and lawyers of Canada have, if of British extraction, generally received a sound and useful education, which, together with the admirable way in which they keep pace with the politics and literature of Europe, enables them to pass very creditably in any society. There are very good book-stores in Canada, particularly at Toronto, where the best English works are to be purchased for little more than half the price which is paid for them at home, and these are largely read by the educated Canadians, who frequently possess excellent libraries. Cheap American novels, often of a very objectionable tendency, are largely circulated among the lower classes; but to provide them with literature of a better character, large libraries have been formed by local efforts, assisted by government grants. Canada as yet possesses no literature of her own, and the literary
