evelopments in _Le Saguenay_ (1896) and
_L'Outaouais superieur_ (1889) by Arthur Buies, who showed what immense
inland breadths of country lay open to suitable "Jean Rivards" from the
older settlements along the St Lawrence. In oratory, which most
French-Canadians admire beyond all other forms of verbal art, Sir
Wilfrid Laurier has greatly surpassed L.J. Papineau, by dealing with
more complex questions, taking a higher point of view, and expressing
himself with a much apter flexibility of style.

Among later poets may be mentioned Pierre Chauveau (1820-1890), Louis
Fiset, (b. 1827), and Adolphe Poisson (b. 1849). Louis Frechette
(1830-1908) has, however, long been the only poet with a reputation
outside of Canada. In 1879 _Les Fleurs boreales_ won the Prix Monthyon
from the French Academy. In 1887 _La Legende d'un peuple_ became the
acknowledged epic of a race. He occasionally nods; is rather strident in
the patriotic vein; and too often answers the untoward call of rhetoric
when his subject is about to soar into the heights of poetry. But a rich
vocabulary, a mastery of verse-forms quite beyond the range of Cremazie,
real originality of conception, individual distinction of style, deep
insight into the soul of his people, and, still more, the glow of
warm-blooded life pulsing through the whole poem, all combine to give
him the greatest place at home and an important one in the world at
large. _Les Vengeances_ (1875), by Leon Pamphile Le May, and _Les
Aspirations_ (1904), by W. Chapman, worthily represent the older and
younger contemporaries. Dr Neree Beauchemin keeps within somewhat narrow
limits in _Les Floraisons matutinales_ (1897); but within them he shows
true poetic genius, a fine sense of rhythm, rhyme and verbal melody, a
_curiosa felicitas_ of epithet and phrase, and so sure an eye for local
colour that a stranger could choose no better guide to the imaginative
life of Canada.

A Canadian drama hardly exists; among its best works are the pleasantly
epigrammatic plays of F.G. Marchand. Novels are not yet much in vogue;
though Madame Conan's _L'Oublie_ (1902) has been crowned by the Academy;
while Dr Choquette's _Les Ribaud_ (1898) is a good dramatic story, and
his _Claude Paysan_ (1899) is an admirably simple idyllic tale of the
hopeless love of a soil-bound _habitant_, told with intense natural
feeling and fine artistic reserve. Chief-Justice Routhier, a most
accomplished occasional writer, is very French-Can